OF  CALIFORNIA 
S  ANGELES 


A  ^^" 


^  / 


MAKERS   OF   LITERATURE 


^^^^ 


i 


i 


MAKEES  OF  LITERATURE 


BEING 

ESSAYS  ON  SHELLEY,  LANDOR,  BROWNING 

BYRON,  ARNOLD,  COLERIDGE,  LOWELL 

WHITTIER,  AND  OTHERS 


BT 


GEOEGE  EDWARD  WOODBEERY 

AUTHOR  OF  "wild  KDBN,"  "  HEART  OF  MAN,"  ETC. 


THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

LONDON :  MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Ltd. 
1900 

All  rights  reserved 


COPTKIGHT,    1890, 

By  HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  &  CO. 

Copyright,  1900, 
By  the  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


•  •• 

•  • « 

•  •  • 


I  •  •  •     • 

•  «  •    •  • 
» •  •  «  •  • 

•  •  •  « •  • 


>••••      •••• 


*  *      •         .*•     ••• 

•  •  <    •  •         ,•   * 
.••*.. 


••  •••  r  •  ..•  ;.•  • 

•    •  ••    ••  ••••■«f 


Nottoootj  ^rtss 

J.  S.  Gushing  &  Co.  —  Berwick  St  Sniitll 
Norwood  Mass.  U.S.A. 


^  PREFACE 


The  greater  portion  of  the  contents  of 
this  volume  were  published  in  1890  as 
"  Studies  in  Letters  and  Life,"  and  orig- 


CO  inally  appeared  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly 

^  and  the  Nation,  1878-1890.     The  author's 

CM 

Q-  later  j)apers  have  been  added  to  this  edi- 

^  tion,  and  are  from  the  Century  Magazine, 

the  Atlantic,  the  Library  of  the  World's 
Best  Literature  (R.  S,  Peale  and  J.  A.  Hill, 
1896,  1897),  the  edition  of  the  "Essays 
of  Elia"  (Little,  Brown  &  Co.,  1892),  and 
the  author's  selection  from  the  poems  of 
Aubrey  de  Vere  (Macmillan,  1894).  The 
volume  thus  comprises  all  of  the  author's 
critical  work  which  it  seems  desirable  to 
reprint. 

2  Columbia  College, 

(d  Janaary  1,  1900. 


O 


855238 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Matthew  Arnold 1 

Coleridge 27 

Shelley's  Poetry  :  A  Sketch 51 

Landor 63 

Crabbb ,    .        .        .01 

Charles  Lamb  ;  or  Elia 109 

The  Poetry  of  Aubrey  de  Verb     ....  124 

Aubrey  de  Verb  on  Poetry 139 

Illustrations  of  Idealism         .        .        .        .        .158 

Bemarks  on  Shelley 186 

Some  Actors'   Criticisms    of  Othello,    Iago,   and 

Shylock 229 

Sir   George    Beaumont,    Coleridge,    and   Words- 
worth   250 

Three  Men  of  Piety 271 

St  John  Greenleaf  Whittier 302 


Viu  CONTENTS 

f>k.     James  Kdssell  Lowell 324 

Darwin's  Life 35O 

Byron's  Centenary 371 

On  Browning's  Death 386 

Shelley's  Work 407 


MAKERS   OF   LITERATURE 


MAKERS   OF   LITERATURE. 


MATTHEW   ARNOLD. 

That  considerable  portion  of  Arnold's 
writings  which  was  concerned  with  edu- 
cation and  politics,  or  with  phases  of  the- 
ological thought  and  religious  tendency, 
however  valuable  in  contemporary  discus- 
sion, and  to  men  and  movements  of  the 
third  quarter  of  the  century,  must  be  set 
on  one  side.  It  is  not  because  of  anything 
there  contained  that  he  has  become  a  per- 
manent figure  of  his  time,  or  is  of  interest 
in  literature.  He  achieved  distinction  as 
a  critic  and  as  a  poet ;  but  although  he  was 
earlier  in  the  field  as  a  poet,  he  was  first 
recognized  by  the  public  at  large  as  a  critic. 
The  union  of  the  two  functions  is  not  un- 
usual in  the  story  of  literature ;  but  where 
success  has  been  attained  in  both,  the 
critic  has  commonly  sprung  from  the  poet 
in  the  man,  and  his  range  and  quality  have 
been  limited  thereby.    It  was  so  with  Dry- 

1 


2  MATTHEW    ARNOLD. 

den  and  Wordsworth,  and,  less  obviously, 
with  Landor  and  Lowell.  In  Arnold's 
case  there  was  no  such  growth:  the -two 
modes  of  writing,  prose  and  verse,  were 
disconnected.  One  might  read  his  essays 
without  suspecting  a  poet,  and  his  poems 
without  discerning  a  critic,  except  so  far 
as  one  finds  the  moralist  there.  In  fact, 
Arnold's  critical  faculty  belonged  rather 
to  the  practical  side  of  his  life,  and  was  a 
part  of  his  talents  as  a  public  man. 

This  appears  by  the  very  definitions  that 
he  gave,  and  by  the  turn  of  his  phrase, 
which  always  keeps  an  audience  rather 
than  a  meditative  reader  in  view.  "What 
is  the  function  of  criticism  at  the  present 
time ? "  he  asks,  and  answers  —  "A  disin- 
terested endeavor  to  learn  and  propagate 
the  best  that  is  known  and  thought  in  the 
world."  That  is  a  wide  warrant.  The 
writer  who  exercises  his  critical  function 
under  it,  however,  is  plainly  a  reformer  at 
heart,  and  labors  for  the  social  welfare. 
He  is  not  an  analyst  of  the  form  of  art  for 
its  own  sake,  or  a  contemplator  of  its  sub- 
stance of  wisdom  or  beauty  merely.  He  is 
not  limited  to  literature  or  the  other  arts 
of  expression,  but  the  world  —  the  intel- 


MATTHEW   ARNOLD.  3 

lectual  world  —  is  all  before  him  where  to 
choose;  and  having  learned  the  best  that 
is  known  and  thought,  his  second  and 
manifestly  not  inferior  duty  is  to  go  into 
all  nations,  a  messenger  of  the  propaganda 
of  intelligence.  It  is  a  great  mission,  and 
nobly  characterized ;  but  if  criticism  be  so 
defined,  it  is  criticism  of  a  large  mould. 

The  scope  of  the  word  conspicuously 
appears  also  in  the  phrase,  which  became 
proverbial,  declaring  that  literature  is  "  a 
criticism  of  life."  In  such  an  employment 
of  terms,  ordinary  meanings  evaporate ; 
and  it  becomes  necessary  to  know  the 
thought  of  the  author  rather  than  the 
usage  of  men.  Without  granting  the  dic- 
tum, therefore,  which  would  be  far  from 
the  purpose,  is  it  not  clear  that  by  "critic  " 
and  "criticism"  Arnold  intended  to  des- 
ignate, or  at  least  to  convey,  something 
peculiar  to  his  own  conception,  —  not 
strictly  related  to  literature  at  all,  it  may 
be,  but  more  closely  tied  to  society  in  its 
general  mental  activit}'?  In  other  words, 
Arnold  was  a  critic  of  civilization  more 
than  of  books,  and  aimed  at  illumination 
by  means  of  ideas.  With  this  goes  his 
manner,  —  that  habitual  air  of  telling  you 


4  MATTHEW   ARNOLD. 

something  which  you  did  not  know  before, 
and  doing  it  for  your  good,  which  stamps 
him  as  a  preacher  born.  Under  the  mask 
of  the  critic  is  the  long  English  face  of 
the  gospeler;  that  type  whose  persistent 
physiognomy  was  never  absent  from  the 
conventicle  of  English  thought. 

This  evangelizing  prepossession  of 
Arnold's  mind  must  be  recognized  in 
order  to  understand  alike  his  attitude  of 
superiority,  his  stiffly  didactic  method,  and 
his  success  in  attracting  converts  in  whom 
the  seed  proved  barren.  The  first  impres- 
sion that  his  entire  work  makes  is  one  of 
limitation ;  so  strict  is  this  limitation,  and 
it  profits  him  so  much,  that  it  seems  the 
element  in  which  he  had  his  being.  On 
a  close  survey,  the  fewness  of  his  ideas  is 
most  surprising,  though  the  fact  is  some- 
what cloaked  by  the  lucidity  of  his  thought, 
its  logical  vigor,  and  the  manner  of  its 
presentation.  He  takes  a  text,  either 
some  formula  of  his  own  or  some  adopted 
phrase  that  he  has  made  his  own,  and  from 
that  he  starts  out  only  to  return  to  it  again 
and  again  with  ceaseless  iteration.  In  his 
illustrations,  for  example,  when  he  has 
pilloried  some  poor  gentleman,  otherwise 


MATTHEW   ARNOLD.  5 

unknown,  for  the  astounded  and  amused 
contemplation  of  the  Anglican  monocle, 
he  cannot  let  him  alone.  So  too  when, 
with  the  journalist's  knack  for  nicknames, 
he  divides  all  England  into  three  parts, 
he  cannot  forget  the  rhetorical  exploit. 
He  never  lets  the  points  he  has  made  fall 
into  oblivion ;  and  hence  his  work  in  gen- 
eral, as  a  critic,  is  skeletonized  to  the 
memory  in  watchwords,  formulas,  and 
nicknames,  which,  taken  altogether,  make 
up  only  a  small  number  of  ideas. 

His  scale,  likewise,  is  meagre.  His 
essay  is  apt  to  be  a  book  review  or  a  plea 
merely;  it  is  without  that  free  allusive- 
ness  and  undeveloped  suggestion  which 
indicate  a  full  mind  and  give  to  such  brief 
pieces  of  writing  the  sense  of  overflow. 
He  takes  no  large  subject  as  a  whole,  but 
either  a  small  one  or  else  some  phases  of 
the  larger  one;  and  he  exhausts  all  that 
he  touches.  He  seems  to  have  no  more  to 
say.  It  is  probable  that  his  acquaintance 
with  literature  was  incommensurate  with 
his  reputation  or  apparent  scope  as  a  writer. 
As  he  has  fewer  ideas  than  any  other 
author  of  his  time  of  the  same  rank,  so  he 
discloses  less  knowledge   of   his   own  or 


6  MATTHEW   ARNOLD, 

foreign  literatures.  His  occupations  for- 
bade wide  acquisition;  he  husbanded  his 
time,  and  economized  also  by  giving  the 
best  direction  to  his  private  studies ;  and 
he  accomplished  much ;  but  he  could  not 
master  the  field  as  any  man  whose  profes- 
sion was  literature  might  easily  do.  Con- 
sequently, in  comparison  with  Coleridge 
or  Lowell,  his  critical  work  seems  dry  and 
bare,  with  neither  the  fluency  nor  the  rich- 
ness of  a  master. 

In  yet  another  point  this  paucity  of 
matter  appears.  What  Mr.  Richard  Holt 
Hutton  says  in  his  essay  on  the  poetry  of 
Arnold  is  so  apposite  here  that  it  will  be 
best  to  quote  the  passage.  He  is  speak- 
ing, in  an  aside,  of  Arnold's  criticisms :  — 

"  They  are  fine,  they  are  keen,  they  are  often  true  ; 
but  they  are  always  too  much  limited  to  the  thin  super- 
ficial layer  of  the  moral  nature  of  their  subjects,  and 
seem  to  take  little  comparative  interest  in  the  deeper 
individuality  beneath.  Eead  his  essay  on  Heine,  and 
you  will  see  the  critic  engrossed  with  the  relation  of 
Heine  to  the  political  and  social  ideas  of  his  day,  and 
passing  over  with  comparative  indifference  the  true 
soul  of  Heine,  the  fountain  of  both  his  poetry  and  his 
cynicism.  Read  his  five  lectures  on  translating  Homer, 
and  observe  how  exclusively  the  critic's  mind  is  occu- 
pied with  the  form  as  distinguished  from  the  substance 
of  the  Homeric  poetry.     Even  when  he  concerns  him- 


MATTHEW   ARNOLD.  7 

self  \Yith  the  greatest  modern  poets,  —  with  Shake- 
speare as  in  the  preface  to  the  earlier  edition  of  liis 
poems,  or  with  Goethe  in  reiterated  poetical  criticisms, 
or  when  he  again  and  again  in  his  poems  treats  of 
Wordsworth,  —  it  is  always  the  style  and  superficial 
doctrine  of  their  poetry,  not  the  individual  character 
and  unique  genius,  which  occupy  him.  He  will  tell 
you  whether  a  poet  is  '  sane  and  clear,'  or  stormy  and 
fervent ;  whether  he  is  rapid  and  noble,  or  loquacious 
and  quaint ;  whether  a  thinker  penetrates  the  husks 
of  conventional  thought  which  mislead  the  crowd  ; 
whether  there  is  sweetness  as  well  as  lucidity  in  his 
aims;  whether  a  descriptive  writer  has  'distinction' 
of  style,  or  is  admirable  only  for  his  vivacity  :  but  he 
rarely  goes  to  the  individual  heart  of  any  of  the  sub- 
jects of  his  criticism  ;  he  finds  their  style  and  class, 
but  not  their  personality  in  that  class ;  he  ranks  his 
men,  but  does  not  portray  them  ;  hardly  even  seems 
to  find  much  interest  in  the  individual  roots  of  their 
character." 

In  brief,  this  is  to  say  that  Arnold  took 
little  interest  in  human  nature ;  nor  is 
there  anything  in  his  later  essays  on  Byron, 
Keats,  Wordsworth,  Milton,  or  Gray,  to 
cause  us  to  revise  the  judgment  on  this 
point.  In  fact,  so  far  as  he  touched  on 
the  personality  of  Keats  or  Gray,  to  take 
the  capital  instances,  he  was  most  unsat- 
isfactory. 

Arnold  was  not,  then,  one  of  those 
critics  who  are   interested  in   life   itself, 


8  MATTHEW   ARNOLD. 

and  through  the  literary  work  seize  on  the 
soul  of  the  author  in  its  original  bright- 
ness, or  set  forth  the  life-stains  in  the  suc- 
cessive incarnations  of  his  heart  and  mind. 
Nor  was  he  of  those  who  consider  the  work 
itself  final,  and  endeavor  simply  to  un- 
derstand it,  —  form  and  matter,  —  and  so 
to  mediate  between  genius  and  our  slower 
intelligence.  He  followed  neither  the  psy- 
chological or  the  aesthetic  method.  It 
need  hardly  be  said  that  he  was  born  too 
early  to  be  able  ever  to  conceive  of  litera- 
ture as  a  phenomenon  of  society,  and  its 
great  men  as  only  terms  in  an  evolutionary 
series.  He  had  only  a  moderate  knowl- 
edge of  literature,  and  his  stock  of  ideas 
was  small ;  his  manner  of  speech  was  hard 
and  dry,  there  was  a  trick  in  his  style,  and 
his  self-repetition  is  tiresome. 

What  gave  him  vogue,  then,  and  what 
still  keeps  his  volumes  of  essays  alive? 
Is  it  anything  more  than  the  temper  in 
which  he  worked,  and  the  spirit  which  he 
evoked  in  the  reader?  He  stood  for  the 
very  spirit  of  intelligence  in  his  time.  He 
made  his  readers  resjoect  ideas,  and  want 
to  have  as  many  as  possible.  He  enveloped 
them  in  an  atmosphere  of  mental  curiosity 


MATTHEW   ARNOLD.  9 

and  alertness,  and  put  them  in  contact 
with  novel  and  attractive  themes.  In  par- 
ticular, he  took  their  minds  to  the  Conti- 
nent and  made  them  feel  that  they  were 
becoming  cosmopolitan  by  knowing  Jou- 
bert ;  or  at  home,  he  rallied  them  in  oppo- 
sition to  the  dullness  of  the  period,  to 
"  barbarism  "  or  other  objectionable  traits 
in  the  social  classes :  and  he  volleyed  con- 
tempt upon  the  common  multitudinous  foe 
in  general,  and  from  time  to  time  cheered 
them  with  some  delectable  examples  of 
single  combat.  It  cannot  be  concealed 
that  there  was  much  malicious  pleasure  in 
it  all.  He  was  not  indisposed  to  high- 
bred cruelty.  Like  Lamb,  he  "loved  a 
fool,"  but  it  was  in  a  mortar;  and  pleasant 
it  was  to  see  the  spectacle  when  he  really 
took  a  man  in  hand  for  the  chastisement 
of  irony.  It  is  thus  that  "the  seraphim 
illuminati  sneer."  And  in  all  his  contro- 
versial writing  there  was  a  brilliancy  and 
unsparingness  that  will  appeal  to  the 
deepest  instincts  of  a  fighting  race,  willy- 
nilly;  and  as  one  had  only  to  read  the 
words  to  feel  himself  among  the  children 
of  light,  so  that  our  withers  were  un- 
wrung,  there  was  high  enjoyment. 


10  MATTHEW   ARNOLD. 

This  liveliness  of  intellectual  conflict, 
together  with  the  sense  of  ideas,  was  a 
boon  to  youth  especially;  and  the  '^aca- 
demic  air  in  which  the  thought  and  style 
always  moved,  with  scholarly  self-posses- 
sion and  assurance,  with  the  dogmatism  of 
"  enlightenment "  in  all  ages  and  among 
all  sects,  with  serenity  and  security  unas- 
sailable, from  within  at  least  —  this  aca- 
demic "clearness  and  purity  without 
shadow  or  stain "  had  an  overpowering 
charm  to  the  college-bred  and  cultivated, 
who  found  the  rare  combination  of  infor- 
mation, taste,  and  aggressiveness  in  one 
of  their  own  ilk.  Above  all,  there  was 
the  play  of  intelligence  on  every  page; 
there  was  an  application  of  ideas  to  life  in 
many  regions  of  the  world's  interests ; 
there  was  contact  with  a  mind  keen,  clear, 
and  firm,  armed  for  controversy  or  persua- 
sion equall}'-,  and  filled  with  eager  belief 
in  itself,  its  ways,  and  its  will. 

To  meet  such  personality  in  a  book  was 
a  bracing  experience ;  and  for  many  these 
essays  were  an  awakening  of  the  mind 
itself.  We  may  go  to  others  for  the 
greater  part  of  what  criticism  can  give,  — 
for  definite  and  fundamental  principles, 


MATTHEW    ARNOLD.  11 

for  adequate  characterization,  for  the  in- 
tuition and  the  revelation,  the  penetrant 
flash  of  thought  and  phrase:  but  Arnold 
generates  and  supports  a  temper  of  mind 
in  which  the  work  of  these  writers  best 
thrives  even  in  its  own  sphere;  and 
through  him  this  temper  becomes  less  in- 
dividual than  social,  encompassing  the 
whole  of  life.  Few  critics  have  been 
really  less  "disinterested,"  few  have  kept 
their  eyes  less  steadily  "  upon  the  object": 
but  that  fact  does  not  lessen  the  value  of 
his  precepts  of  disinterestedness  and  ob- 
jectivity ;  nor  is  it  necessary  in  becoming 
"a  child  of  light,"  to  join  in  spirit  the 
unhappy  "remnant"  of  the  academy,  or  to 
drink  too  deep  of  that  honeyed  satisfac- 
tion, with  which  he  fills  his  readers,  of 
being  on  his  side.  As  a  critic,  Arnold 
succeeds  if  his  main  purpose  does  not  fail, 
and  that  was  to  reinforce  the  party  of 
ideas,  of  culture,  of  the  children  of  light; 
to  impart,  not  moral  vigor,  but  openness 
and  reasonableness  of  mind ;  and  to  arouse 
and  arm  the  intellectual  in  contradistinc- 
tion to  the  other  energies  of  civilization. 

The  poetry  of  Arnold,   to  pass   to  the 
second  portion  of  his  work,  was  less  Avidely 


12  MATTHEW  ARNOLD. 

welcomed  than  his  prose,  and  made  its 
way  very  slowly;  but  it  now  seems  the 
more  important  and  permanent  part.  It  is 
not  small  in  quantity,  though  his  unpro- 
ductiveness in  later  years  has  made  it 
appear  that  he  was  less  fluent  and  abun- 
dant in  verse  than  he  really  was.  The 
remarkable  thing,  as  one  turns  to  his 
poems,  is  the  contrast  in  spirit  that  they 
afford  to  the  essays :  there  is  here  an  at- 
mosphere of  entire  calm.  We  seem  to  be 
in  a  different  world.  This  fact,  with  the 
singular  silence  of  his  familiar  letters  in 
regard  to  his  verse,  indicates  that  his 
poetic  life  was  truly  a  thing  apart. 

In  one  respect  only  is  there  something 
in  common  between  his  prose  and  verse: 
just  as  interest  in  human  nature  is  ab- 
sent in  the  former,  it  is  absent  also  in  the 
latter.  There  is  no  action  in  the  poems; 
neither  is  there  character  for  its  own  sake. 
Arnold  was  a  man  of  the  mind,  and  he 
betrays  no  interest  in  personality  except 
for  its  intellectual  traits ;  in  Clough  as  in 
Obermann,  it  is  the  life  of  thought,  not 
the  human  being,  that  he  portrays.  As  a 
poet,  he  expresses  the  moods  of  the  medi- 
tative spirit  in  view  of  nature  and  our 


MATTHEW   ARNOLD.  13 

moral  existence;  and  he  represents  life, 
not  lyrically  by  its  changeful  moments, 
nor  tragically  by  its  conflict  in  great  char- 
acters, but  philosophically  by  a  self-con- 
tained and  unvarying  monologue,  deeper 
or  less  deep  in  feeling  and  with  cadences 
of  tone,  but  always  with  the  same  grave 
and  serious  effect.  He  is  constantly 
thinking,  whatever  his  subject  or  his 
mood ;  his  attitude  is  intellectual,  his  sen- 
timents are  maxims,  his  conclusions  are 
advisory.  His  world  is  the  sphere  of 
thought,  and  his  poems  have  the  distance 
and  repose  and  also  the  coldness  that  befit 
that  sphere ;  and  the  character  of  his  im- 
agination, which  lays  hold  of  form  and 
reason,  makes  natural  to  him  the  classical 
style. 

It  is  obvious  that  the  sources  of  his 
poetical  culture  are  Greek.  It  is  not 
merely,  however,  that  he  takes  for  his  early 
subjects  Merope  and  Empedocles,  or  that 
he  strives  in  Balder  Dead  for  Homeric 
narrative,  or  that  in  the  recitative  to 
which  he  was  addicted  he  evoked  an  im- 
melodious  phantom  of  Greek  choruses ;  nor 
is  it  the  "  marmoreal  air  "  that  chills  while 
it  ennobles  much  of  his  finest  work.     One 


14  MATTHEW   ARNOLD. 

feels  the  Greek  quality  not  as  a  source, 
but  as  a  presence.  In  Tennyson,  Keats, 
and  Shelley,  there  was  Greek  influence, 
bat  in  them  the  result  was  modern.  In 
Arnold  the  antiquity  remains ;  remains  in 
mood,  just  as  in  Landor  it  remains  in  form. 
The  Greek  twilight  broods  over  all  his 
poetry.  It  is  pagan  in  philosophic  spirit; 
not  Attic,  but  of  a  later  and  stoical  time, 
with  the  very  virtues  of  patience,  endur- 
ance, suffering,  not  in  their  Christian 
types,  but  as  they  now  seem  to  a  post- 
Christian  imagination  looking  back  to  the 
imperial  past.  There  is  a  difference,  it  is 
true,  in  Arnold's  expression  of  the  mood: 
he  is  as  little  Sophoclean  as  he  is  Homeric, 
as  little  Lucretian  as  he  is  Vergilian. 
The  temperament  is  not  the  same,  not  a 
survival  or  a  revival  of  the  antique,  but 
original  and  living.  And  yet  the  mood  of 
the  verse  is  felt  at  once  to  be  a  reincarna- 
tion of  the  deathless  spirit  of  Hellas  that 
in  other  ages  also  has  made  beautiful  and 
solemn  for  a  time  the  shadowed  places  of 
the  Christian  world.  If  one  does  not 
realize  this,  he  must  miss  the  secret  of 
the  tranquillity,  the  chill,  the  grave  aus- 
terity, as  well  as  the  philosophical  resig- 


MATTHEW    ARNOLD.  15 

nation,  wliich  are  essential  to  the  verse. 
Even  in  those  parts  of  the  poems  which 
use  romantic  motives,  one  reason  of  their 
original  charm  is  that  they  suggest  how 
the  Greek  imagination  would  have  dealt 
with  the  forsaken  merman,  the  church  of 
Brou,  and  Tristram  and  Iseult.  The 
presence  of  such  motives,  such  mythology, 
and  such  Christian  and  chivalric  color  in 
the  work  of  Arnold  does  not  disturh  the 
simple  unity  of  its  feeling,  which  finds  no 
solvent  for  life,  whatever  its  accident  of 
time  and  place  and  faith,  except  in  that 
Greek  spirit  which  ruled  in  thoughtful 
men  before  the  triumph  of  Christianity, 
and  is  still  native  in  men  who  accept  the 
intellect  as  the  sole  guide  of  life. 

It  was  with  reference  to  these  modern 
men  and  the  movement  they  took  part  in, 
that  he  made  his  serious  claim  to  greatness ; 
to  rank,  that  is,  with  Tennyson  and  Brown- 
ing, as  he  said,  in  the  literature  of  his 
time.  "My  poems, "he  wrote,  "represent 
on  the  whole  the  main  movement  of  mind 
of  the  last  quarter  of  a  century;  and  thus 
they  will  probably  have  their  day  as  people 
become  conscious  to  themselves  of  what 
that  movement  of  mind  is,  and  interested 


16  MATTHEW   ABNOLD. 

in  the  literary  productions  that  reflect  it. 
It  might  be  fairly  urged  that  I  have  less 
poetical  sentiment  than  Tennyson,  and 
less  intellectual  vigor  and  abundance  than 
Browning;  yet  because  I  have,  perhaps, 
more  of  a  fusion  of  the  two  than  either  of 
them,  and  have  more  regularly  applied 
that  fusion  to  the  main  line  of  modern 
development,  I  am  likely  enough  to  have 
my  turn,  as  they  have  had  theirs."  If  the 
main  movement  had  been  such  as  he 
thought  of  it,  or  if  it  had  been  of  impor- 
tance in  the  long  run,  there  might  be  a 
sounder  basis  for  this  hope  than  now  ap- 
pears to  be  the  case ;  but  there  can  be  no 
doubt,  let  the  contemporary  movement 
have  been  what  it  may,  that  Arnold's 
mood  is  one  that  will  not  pass  out  of  men's 
hearts  to-day  nor  to-morrow. 

On  the  modern  side  the  example  of 
Wordsworth  was  most  formative,  and  in 
fact  it  is  common  to  describe  Arnold  as  a 
Wordsworthian:  and  so,  in  his  contempla- 
tive attitude  to  nature,  and  in  his  habitual 
recourse  to  her,  he  was ;  but  both  nature 
herself  as  she  appeared  to  him,  and  his 
mood  in  her  presence,  were  very  different 
from  Wordsworth's  conception  and  emo- 


MATTHEW   ARNOLD.  17 

tion.  Arnold  finds  in  nature  a  refuge 
from  life,  an  anodyne,  an  escape;  but 
Wordsworth,  in  going  into  the  hills  for 
poetical  communion,  passed  from  a  less  to 
a  fuller  and  deeper  life,  and  obtained  an 
inspiration,  and  was  seeking  the  goal  of 
all  his  being.  In  the  method  of  approach, 
too,  as  well  as  in  the  character  of  the  ex- 
perience, there  was  a  profound  difference 
between  the  two  poets.  Arnold  sees  with 
the  outward  rather  than  the  inward  eye. 
He  is  pictorial  in  a  way  that  Wordsworth 
seldom  is ;  he  uses  detail  much  more,  and 
gives  a  group  or  a  scene  with  the  exter- 
nality of  a  painter.  The  method  resem- 
bles that  of  Tennyson  rather  than  that  of 
Wordsworth,  and  has  more  direct  analogy 
with  the  Greek  manner  than  with  the 
modern  and  emotional  schools ;  it  is  ob- 
jective, often  minute,  and  always  care- 
fully composed,  in  the  artistic  sense  of 
that  term.  The  description  of  the  river 
Oxus,  for  example,  though  faintly  charged 
with  suggested  and  allegoric  meaning,  is 
a  noble  close  to  the  poem  which  ends  in 
it.  The  scale  is  large,  and  Arnold  was 
fond  of  a  broad  landscape  of  mountains, 
and  prospects  over  the  land;  but  one  can- 


18  MATTHEW    ARNOLD. 

not  fancy  Wordsworth  Avriting  it.  So  too, 
on  a  small  scale,  the  charming  scene  of  the 
English  garden  in  Thj^rsis  is  far  from 
Wordsworth's  manner:  — 

"  When  garden  walks  and  all  the  grassy  floor 
With  blossoms  red  and  white  of  fallen  May 

And  chestnut-flowers  are  strewn  — 
So  have  I  heard  the  cuckoo's  parting  cry, 
From  the  wet  field,  through  the  vext  garden  trees, 
Come  with  the  volleying  rain  and  tossing  breeze." 

This  is  a  picture  that  could  be  framed: 
how  different  from  Wordsworth's  "wan- 
derinof  voice  " !  Or  to  take  another  notable 
example,  which,  like  the  Oxus  passage,  is 
a  fine  close  in  the  Tristram  and  Iseult, 
—  the  hunter  on  the  arras  above  the  dead 
lovers :  — 

"  A  stately  huntsman,  clad  in  green, 
And  round  him  a  fresh  forest  scene. 
On  that  clear  forest-knoll  he  stays. 
With  his  pack  round  him,  and  delays. 

****** 
The  wild  boar  rustles  in  his  lair. 
The  fierce  hounds  snuff  the  tainted  air, 
But  lord  and  hounds  keep  rooted  there. 
Cheer,  cheer  thy  dogs  into  the  brake, 
0  hunter  !  and  without  a  fear 
Thy  golden  tasseled  bugle  blow  —  " 

But  no  one  is  deceived,  and  the  hunter 
does  not  move  from  the  arras,  but  is  still 


MATTHEW    ARNOLD.  19 

"rooted  there,"  with  his  green  suit  and  his 
golden  tassel.     The  piece  is  pictorial,  and 
highly  wrought  for  pictorial  effects  only, 
obviously  decorative    and   used   as   stage 
scenery   precisely   in  the  manner  of   our 
later  theatrical  art,    with  that  accent  of 
forethought  which  turns  the  beautiful  into 
the   jesthetic.     This   is    a   method  which 
Wordsworth   never   used.      Take  one  of 
his  pictures,  the  Reaper  for  example,  and 
see   the    difference.     The    one   is   out-of- 
doors,  the  other  is  of  the  studio.     The  pur- 
pose of  these  illustrations  is  to  show  that 
Arnold's  nature-pictures  are  not  only  con- 
sciously artistic,  with  an  arrangement  that 
approaches  artifice,   but  that  he  is  inter- 
ested through  his  eye  primarily  and  not 
through  his  emotions.     It  is  characteristic 
of  his  temperament  also  that  he  reminds 
one  most  often  of  the  painter  in  water- 
colors. 

If  there  is  this  difference  between  Ar- 
nold and  Wordsworth  in  method,  a  greater 
difference  in  spirit  is  to  be  anticipated.  It 
is  a  fixed  gulf.  In  nature  Wordsworth 
found  the  one  spirit's  "plastic  stress," 
and  a  near  and  intimate  revelation  to  the 
soul  of  truths  that  were  his  greatest  joy 


20  MATTHEW   ARNOLD, 

and  support  in  existence.  Arnold  finds 
there  no  inhabitancy  of  God,  no  such 
streaming  forth  of  wisdom  and  beauty 
from  the  fountain  heads  of  being;  but  the 
secret  frame  of  nature  is  filled  only  with 
the  darkness,  the  melancholy,  the  waiting 
endurance  that  is  projected  from  him- 
self: — 

"  Yet,  Fausta,  the  mute  turf  we  tread, 
Tlie  solemn  hills  about  vis  spread, 
The  stream  that  falls  incessantly. 
The  strange-scrawled  rocks,  the  lonely  sky, 
If  I  might  lend  their  life  a  voice, 
Seem  to  bear  rather  than  rejoice." 

Compare  this  with  Wordsworth's  Stan- 
zas on  Peele  Castle,  and  the  important 
reservations  that  must  be  borne  in  mind 
in  describing  Arnold  as  a  Wordsworthian 
will  become  clearer.  It  is  as  a  relief  from 
thought,  as  a  beautiful  and  half -physical 
diversion,  as  a  scale  of  being  so  vast  and 
mysterious  as  to  reduce  the  pettiness  of 
human  life  to  nothingness,  —  it  is  in  these 
ways  that  nature  has  value  in  Arnold's 
verse.  Such  a  poet  may  describe  natural 
scenes  well,  and  obtain  by  means  of  them 
contrast  to  human  conditions,  and  decora- 
tive beauty;   but  he    does   not    penetrate 


MATTHEW   ABNOLB.  21 

nature  or  interpret  what  her  significance 
is  in  the  human  spirit,  as  the  more  emo- 
tional poets  have  done.  He  ends  in  an 
antithesis,  not  in  a  synthesis,  and  both 
nature  and  man  lose  by  the  divorce.  One 
looks  in  vain  for  anything  deeper  than 
landscapes  in  Arnold's  treatment  of  nature ; 
she  is  emptied  of  her  own  infinite,  and 
has  become  spiritually  void:  and  in  the 
simple  great  line  in  which  he  gave  the 
sea  — 

"The  unplumbed,  salt,  estranging  sea  —  " 

he  is  thinking  of  man,  not  of  the  ocean: 
and  the  mood  seems  ancient  rather  than 
modern,  the  feeling  of  a  Greek,  just  as  the 
sound  of  the  waves  to  him  is  always 
^gean. 

In  treating  of  man's  life,  which  must  be 
the  main  thing  in  any  poet's  work,  Arnold 
is  either  very  austere  or  very  pessimistic. 
If  the  feeling  is  moral,  the  predominant 
impression  is  of  austerity;  if  it  is  intel- 
lectual, the  predominant  impression  is  of 
sadness;  he  was  not  insensible  to  the 
charm  of  life,  but  he  feels  it  in  his  senses 
only  to  deny  it  in  his  mind.  The  illus- 
trative passage  is  from  Dover  Beach  :  — 


22  MATTHEW    ARNOLD. 

"  Ah,  love,  let  us  be  true 
To  one  another  !  for  the  world  which  seems 
To  lie  before  us  like  a  land  of  dreams. 

So  various,  so  beautiful,  so  new,  .^- 

Hath  really  neither  joy,  nor  love,  nor  light, 
Nor  certitude,  nor  peace,  nor  help  for  pain." 

This  is  the  contradiction  of  sense  and 
thought,  the  voice  of  a  regret  grounded 
in  the  intellect  (for  if  it  were  vital  and 
grounded  in  the  emotions,  it  would 
become  despair);  the  creed  of  illusion 
and  futility  in  life,  which  is  the  charac- 
teristic note  of  Arnold,  and  the  reason  of 
his  acceptance  by  many  minds.  The  one 
thins:  about  life  which  he  most  insists  on 
is  its  isolation,  its  individuality.  In  the 
series  called  "Switzerland,"  this  is  the 
substance  of  the  whole ;  and  the  doctrine 
is  stated  with  an  intensity  and  power, 
with  an  amplitude  and  prolongation,  that 
set  these  poems  apart  as  the  most  remark- 
able of  all  his  lyrics.  From  a  poet  so 
deeply  impressed  with  this  aspect  of  ex- 
istence, and  unable  to  find  its  remedy  or 
its  counterpart  in  the  harmony  of  life,  no 
joyful  or  hopeful  word  can  be  expected, 
and  none  is  found.  The  second  thing 
about  life  which  he   dwells  on  is  its  fu- 


MATTHEW   ARNOLD.  23 

tility ;  tliougli  he  bids  one  strive  and  work, 
and  points  to  the  example  of  the  strong 
whom  he  has  known,  yet  one  feels  that 
his  voice  rings  more  true  when  he  writes 
of  Obermann  than  in  any  other  of  the  ele- 
giac poems.  In  such  verse  as  the  Sum- 
mer Night,  again,  the  genuineness  of  the 
mood  is  indubitable.  In  The  Sick  King  of 
Bokhara,  the  one  dramatic  expression  of 
his  genius,  futility  is  the  very  centre 
of  the  action.  The  fact  that  so  much  of 
his  poetry  seems  to  take  its  motive  from 
the  subsidence  of  Christian  faith  has  set 
him  among  the  skeptic  or  agnostic  poets, 
and  the  "main  movement"  which  he  be- 
lieved he  had  expressed  was  doubtless 
that  in  which  agnosticism  was  a  leading 
element.  The  unbelief  of  the  third  quar- 
ter of  the  century  was  certainly  a  control- 
ling influence  over  him,  and  in  a  man 
mainly  intellectual  by  nature  it  could  not 
well  have  been  otherwise. 

Hence,  as  one  looks  at  his  more  philo- 
sophical and  lyrical  poems  —  the  pro- 
founder  part  of  his  work  —  and  endeavors 
to  determine  their  character  and  sources 
alike,  it  is  plain  to  see  that  in  the  old 
phrase,  "the  pride  of  the  intellect"  lifts 


24  MATTHEW   ABNOLD. 

its  lonely  column  over  the  desolation  of 
every  page.  The  man  of  the  academy  is 
here,  as  in  the  prose,  after  all.  He  re- 
veals himself  in  the  literary  motive,  the 
bookish  atmosphere  of  the  verse,  in  its 
vocabulary,  its  elegance  of  structure,  its 
precise  phrase  and  its  curious  allusions 
(involving  foot-notes),  and  in  fact, 
throughout  all  its  form  and  structure.  So 
self-conscious  is  it  that  it  becomes  frankly 
prosaic  at  inconvenient  times,  and  is  more 
often  on  the  level  of  eloquent  and  grace- 
ful rhetoric  than  of  poetry.  It  is  fre- 
quently liquid  and  melodious,  but  there 
is  no  burst  of  native  song  in  it  anywhere. 
It  is  the  work  of  a  true  poet,  nevertheless; 
for  there  are  many  voices  for  the  Muse. 
It  is  sincere,  it  is  touched  with  reality ;  it 
is  the  mirror  of  a  phase  of  life  in  our 
times,  and  not  in  our  times  only,  'but 
whenever  the  intellect  seeks  expression 
for  its  sense  of  the  limitation  of  its  own 
career,  and  its  sadness  in  a  world  which  it 
cannot  solve. 

A  word  should  be  added  concerning  the 
personality  of  Arnold  which  is  revealed 
in  his  familiar  letters,  —  a  collection  that 
has  dignified  the  records  of  literature  with 


MATTHEW   ABNOLD.  25 

a  singularly  noble  memory  of  private  life. 
Few  who  did  not  know  Arnold  could  have 
been  prepared  for  the  revelation  of  a  nature 
so  true,  so  amiable,  so  dutiful.  In  every 
relation  of  private  life  he  is  shown  to  have 
been  a  man  of  exceptional  constancy  and 
plainness.  The  letters  are  mainly  home 
letters ;  but  a  few  friendships  also  yielded 
up  their  hoard,  and  thus  the  circle  of  pri- 
vate life  is  made  complete.  Every  one 
must  take  delight  in  the  mental  association 
with  Arnold  in  the  scenes  of  his  existence, 
thus  daily  exposed,  and  in  his  family  affec- 
tions. A  nature  warm  to  its  own,  kindly 
to  all,  cheerful,  fond  of  sport  and  fun,  and 
always  fed  from  pure  fountains,  and  with 
it  a  character  so  founded  upon  the  rock,  so 
humbly  serviceable,  so  continuing  in 
power  and  grace,  must  wake  in  all  the 
responses  of  happy  appreciation,  and  leave 
the  charm  of  memory. 

He  did  his  duty  as  naturally  as  if  it 
required  neither  resolve,  nor  effort,  nor 
thought  of  any  kind  for  the  morrow,  and 
he  never  failed,  seemingly,  in  act  or  word 
of  sympathy,  in  little  or  great  things; 
and  when,  to  this,  one  adds  the  clear  ether 
of  the  intellectual  life  where  he  habitually 


26  MATTHEW   ARNOLD. 

moved  in  his  own  life  apart,  and  the  hu- 
manity of  his  home,  the  gift  that  these 
letters  bring  may  be  appreciated.  .That 
gift  is  the  man  himself;  but  set  in  the 
atmosphere  of  home,  with  sonship  and 
fatherhood,  sisters  and  brothers,  with  the 
bereavements  of  years  fully  accomplished, 
and  those  of  babyhood  and  boyhood,  —  a 
sweet  and  wholesome  English  home,  with 
all  the  cloud  and  sunshine  of  the  English 
world  drifting  over  its  roof-tree,  and  the 
soil  of  England  beneath  its  stones,  and 
English  duties  for  the  breath  of  its  being. 
To  add  such  a  home  to  the  household- 
rights  of  English  literature  is  perhaps 
something  from  which  Arnold  would  have 
shrunk,  but  it  endears  his  memory. 


COLERIDGE. 

The  poetic  genius  of  Coleridge,  the 
highest  of  his  many  gifts,  found  brilliant 
and  fascinating  expression.  His  poems 
—  those  in  which  his  fame  lives  —  are  as 
unique  as  they  are  memorable ;  and  though 
their  small  number,  their  confined  range, 
and  the  brief  period  during  which  his  fac- 
ulty was  exercised  with  full  freedom  and 
power,  seem  to  indicate  a  narrow  vein, 
yet  the  remainder  of  his  work  in  prose  and 
verse  leaves  an  impression  of  extraordinary 
and  abundant  intellectual  force.  In  pro- 
portion as  his  imaginative  creations  stand 
apart,  the  spirit  out  of  which  they  came 
must  have  possessed  some  singularity :  and 
if  the  reader  is  not  content  with  simple 
sesthetic  appreciation  of  what  the  gods  pro- 
vide, but  has  some  touch  of  curiosity  lead- 
ing him  to  look  into  the  source  of  such 
remarkable  achievement  and  its  human 
history,  he  is  at  once  interested  in  the 
personality  of  the  "subtle-souled  psycholo- 
gist," as  Shelley  with  his  accurate  critical 

27 


28  COLEBIDGE. 

insight  first  named  him;  in  experiencing 
the  fascination  of  the  poetry  one  remem- 
bers the  charm  which  Coleridge  had  in  life, 
that  quality  which  arrested  attention  in 
all  companies  and  drew  men's  minds  and 
hearts  with  a  sense  of  something  marvel- 
ous in  him  —  "the  most  wonderful  man," 
said  Wordsworth,  "  that  I  ever  met."  The 
mind  and  heart  of  Coleridge,  his  whole 
life,  have  been  laid  open  by  himself  and 
his  friends  and  acquaintances  without  re- 
serve in  many  volumes  of  letters  and 
memoirs;  it  is  easy  to  figure  him  as  he 
lived  and  to  recover  his  moods  and  aspect: 
but  in  order  to  conceive  his  nature  and 
define  its  traits,  it  is  necessary  to  take 
account  especially  of  his  incomplete  and 
less  perfect  work,  of  his  miscellaneous 
interests,  and  those  activities  which  filled 
and  confused  his  life  without  having  any 
important  share  in  establishing  his  fame. 

The  intellectual  precocit}^  which  is  the 
leading  trait  of  Coleridge's  boyhood,  in 
the  familiar  portrait  of  "the  inspired 
charity-boy  "  drawn  by  Lamb  from  school- 
boy memories,  is  not  unusual  in  a  youth 
of  genius ;  but  the  omnivorousness  of 
knowledge  which  he  then  displayed  con- 


COLERIDGE.  29 

tinued  into  his  manhood.  He  consumed 
vast  quantities  of  book-learning.  It  is  a 
more  remarkable  characteristic  that  from 
the  earliest  period  in  which  he  comes  into 
clear  view,  he  was  accustomed  to  give  out 
his  ideas  with  freedom  in  an  inexhaustible 
stream  of  talk.  The  activity  of  his  mind 
was  as  phenomenal  as  its  receptivity.  In 
his  college  days,  too,  he  was  fanatical  in 
all  his  energies.  The  remark  of  Southey 
after  Shelley's  visit  to  him,  that  here  was 
a  young  man  who  was  just  what  he  him- 
self had  been  in  his  college  days,  is  illus- 
trative ;  for  if  Southey  was  then  inflamed 
with  radicalism,  Coleridge  was  yet  more 
deeply  infected  and  mastered  by  that  wild 
fever  of  the  revolutionary  dawn.  The 
tumult  of  Coleridge's  mind,  its  incessant 
action,  the  lack  of  discipline  in  his  thought, 
of  restraint  in  his  expression,  of  judgment 
in  his  affairs,  are  all  important  elements 
in  his  character  at  a  time  which  in  most 
men  would  be  called  the  formative  period 
of  manhood,  but  which  in  him  seems  to 
have  been  intensely  chaotic;  what  is  most 
noticeable,  however,  is  the  volume  of  his 
mental  energy.  He  expressed  himself, 
too,  in  ways  natural   to  such    self-abun- 


30  COLERIDGE. 

dance.  He  was  always  a  discourser,  if 
the  name  may  be  used,  from  the  London 
days  at  the  "  Salutation  and  the  Ca^t "  of 
which  Lamb  tells,  saying  that  the  land- 
lord was  ready  to  retain  him  because  of  the 
attraction  of  his  conversation  for  custom- 
ers ;  and  as  he  went  on  to  the  more  set 
forms  of  such  monologue,  he  became  a 
preacher  without  pay  in  Unitarian  chap- 
els, a  journalist  with  unusual  capacity  for 
ready  and  sonorous  writing  in  the  press,  a 
composer  of  whole  periodicals  such  as  his 
ventures  The  WatcJmian  and  The  Friend, 
and  a  lecturer  using  only  slight  notes  as 
the  material  of  his  remarks  upon  literature, 
education,  philosophy,  theology,  or  what- 
ever the  subject  might  be.  In  all  these 
methods  of  expression  which  he  took  uj) 
one  after  the  other,  he  merely  talked  in  an 
ample  way  upon  multifarious  topics;  in 
the  conversation,  sermon,  leading  article, 
written  discourse,  or  flowing  address,  he 
was  master  of  a  swelling  and  often  bril- 
liant volubility,  but  he  had  neither  the 
certainty  of  the  orator  nor  the  unfailing 
distinction  of  the  author;  there  was  an 
occasional  and  impromptu  quality,  a  collo- 
quial and  episodical  manner,  the  style  of 


COLERIDGE.  31 

the  irresponsible  speaker.  In  his  earlier 
days  especially,  the  dominant  note  in 
Coleridge's  whole  nature  was  excitement. 
He  was  always  animated,  he  was  often 
violent,  he  was  always  without  the  princi- 
ple of  control.  Indeed,  a  weakness  of 
moral  power  seems  to  have  been  congeni- 
tal, in  the  sense  that  he  was  not  perma- 
nently bound  by  a  practical  sense  of  duty 
nor  apparently  observant  of  what  place 
duty  has  in  real  life.  There  was  misdi- 
rection of  his  affairs  from  the  time  when 
they  came  into  his  own  hands ;  there  was 
impulsiveness,  thoughtlessness,  a  lack  of 
judgment  which  augured  ill  for  him ;  and 
in  its  total  effect  this  amounted  to  folly. 
His  intoxication  with  the  scheme  known 
as  Pantisocracy,  by  which  he  with  Southey 
and  a  few  like-minded  projectors  were  to 
found  a  socialistic  community  on  the 
banks  of  the  Susquehanna,  is  the  most 
obvious  comment  on  his  practical  sense. 
But  his  marriage,  with  the  anecdotes  of 
its  preliminaries  (one  of  which  was  that 
in  those  colloquies  with  Lamb  at  the  Lon- 
don tavern,  so  charmingly  described  by 
his  boon  companion,  he  had  forgotten  his 
engagement  or  was  indifferent  to  it),  more 


32  COLERIDGE. 

strikingly  exemplifies  the  irresponsible 
course  of  his  life,  more  particularly  as  it 
proved  to  be  ill-sorted,  full  of  petty  diffi- 
culties and  makeshift  expedients,  and  in 
the  end  a  disastrous  failure.  A  radical 
social  scheme  and  an  imprudent  marriage 
might  have  fallen  to  his  share  of  human 
folly,  however,  without  exciting  remark, 
if  in  other  ways  or  at  a  later  time  he  had 
exhibited  the  qualities  which  would  allow 
one  to  dismiss  these  matters  as  mere  in- 
stances of  immaturity ;  but  wherever  Cole- 
ridge's reasonable  control  over  himself  or 
his  affairs  is  looked  to,  it  appears  to  have 
been  feeble.  On  the  other  hand,  the  con- 
stancy of  his  excitement  is  plain.  It  was 
not  only  mental,  but  physical.  He  was, 
as  a  young  man,  full  of  energy  and  capable 
of  a  good  deal  of  hard  exercise;  he  had 
animal  spirits,  and  Wordsworth  describes 
him  as  "noisy"  and  "gamesome,"  as  one 
who 

"  His  limbs  would  toss  about  him  -with  delight, 
Like  branches  when  strong  winds  the  trees  annoy  ; " 

and  from  several  passages  of  his  own  writ- 
ing, which  are  usually  disregarded,  the 
evidence  of  a  spirit  of  rough  humor  and 


COLERIDGE.  33 

fun  is  easily  obtained.  The  truth  is  that 
Coleridge  changed  a  great  deal  in  his  life ; 
he  felt  himself  to  be  very  different  in  later 
years  from  what  he  was  in  the  time  when, 
to  his  own  memory  he  was  a  sort  of  glori- 
fied spirit :  and  this  earlier  Coleridge  had 
many  traits  which  are  ignored  sometimes, 
as  Carlyle  ignored  them,  and  are  sometimes 
remembered  rather  as  idealizations  of  his 
friends  in  their  affectionate  thoughts  of 
him,  but  in  any  event  are  irreconcilable 
with  the  figure  of  the  last  period  of  his 
life. 

It  has  been  suggested  that  there  was 
something  of  disease  or  at  least  of  ill 
health  in  Coleridge  always,  and  that  it 
should  be  regarded  as  influencing  his  tem- 
perament. Whether  it  were  so  or  not,  the 
plea  itself  shows  the  fact.  If  excitement 
was  the  dominant  note,  as  has  been  said, 
in  his  whole  nature,  it  could  not  exist 
without  a  physical  basis  and  accompani- 
ment; and  his  bodily  state  appears  to  have 
been  often  less  one  of  animation  than  of 
agitation,  and  his  correspondence  fre- 
quently discloses  moods  that  seem  almost 
frantic.  In  the  issue,  under  stress  of  pain 
and  trouble,  he  became  an  opium-eater; 


34  COLERIDGE. 

but  his  physical  nature  may  fairly  be 
described  as  predisposed  to  such  states  as 
lead  to  the  use  of  opium  and  also  .result 
from  its  use,  with  the  attendant  mental 
moods.  His  susceptibility  to  sensuous 
impressions,  to  a  voluptuousness  of  the 
entire  being,  together  with  a  certain  lassi- 
tude and  languor,  lead  to  the  same  conclu- 
sion, which  thus  seems  to  be  supported  on 
all  sides, — that  Coleridge  was,  in  his 
youth  and  early  manhood,  fevered  through 
all  his  intellectual  and  sensuous  nature, 
and  deficient  on  the  moral  and  practical 
sides  in  those  matters  that  related  to  his 
personal  affairs.  It  is  desirable  to  bring 
this  out  in  plain  terms,  because  in  Cole- 
ridge it  is  best  to  acknowledge  at  once 
that  his  character  was,  so  far  as  our  part 
—  the  world's  part  —  in  him  is  concerned, 
of  less  consequence  than  his  temperament; 
a  subtler  and  more  profound  thing  than 
character,  though  without  moral  meaning. 
It  is  not  unfair  to  say,  since  literature  is 
to  be  regarded  most  profitably  as  the  ex- 
pression of  human  personality,  that  Avith 
Coleridge  the  modern  literature  of  tem- 
j)erament,  as  it  has  been  lately  recognized 
in  extreme  phases,  begins;  not  that  tem- 


COLERIDGE.  (35 

perament  is  a  new  thing  in  the  century 
now  chising,  nor  that  it  lias  been  without 
influence  hitherto,  but  that  now  it  is  more 
often  considered,  and  has  in  fact  more 
often  been,  an  exclusive  ground  of  artistic 
expression.  The  temperament  of  Cole-  "^ 
ridge  was  one  of  diffused  sensuousness 
physically,  and  of  abnormal  mental  moods, 
—  moods  of  weakness,  languor,  collapse, 
of  visionary  imaginative  life  with  a  night 
atmosphere  of  the  spectral,  moonlit,  swim- 
ming, scarcely  substantial  world;  and  the 
poems  he  wrote,  which  are  the  contribu- 
tions he  made  to  the  world's  literature,  are 
based  on  this  temperament,  like  some 
Fata  Morgana  upon  the  sea.  The  appar-  ■— 
ent  exclusion  of  reality  from  the  poems  in 
which  his  genius  was  most  manifest  finds 
its  analogue  in  the  detachment  of  his  own 
mind  from  the  moral,  the  practical,  the 
usual  in  life  as  he  led  it  in  his  spirit;  and 
his  work  of  the  highest  creative  sort,  which 
is  all  there  is  to  his  enduring  fame,  stands 
amid  his  prose  and  verse  composition  of  a 
lower  sort  like  an  island  in  the  waste  of 
waters.  This  may  be  best  shown,  perhaps, 
by  a  gradual  approach  through  his  cruder 
to  his  most  j)erfect  compositions. 


COLEBIDGE. 

The  cardinal  fact  in  Coleridge's  genius 
is  that  notwithstanding  his  immense  sen- 
suous susceptibilities  and  mental  receptiv- 
ity, and  the  continual  excitement  of  his 
spirit,    he    never    rose    into   the   highest 
sphere  of  creative  activity  except  for  the 
brief   period   called   his    annus    mirahilis, 
when  his  great  poems  were  written ;  and 
with  this  is  the  further  related  fact  that 
in  him  we  witness  the   spectacle  of  the 
imaginative      instinct      overborne       and 
supplanted    by    the    intellectual    faculty 
exercising    its    speculative    and    critical 
functions;  and  in  addition,  one  observes 
in  his   entire  work  an   extraordinary  in- 
equality not  only  of  treatment,  but  also 
of   subject-matter.      In   general,    he   was 
an  egoistic  writer.     His  sensitiveness  to- 
nature  was  twofold:  in  the  first  place  he 
noticed  in  the  objects  and  movements  of 
nature  evanescent  and  minute  details,  and 
as  his  sense  of  beauty  was  keen,  he  saw 
and  recorded  truly  the  less  obvious  and 
less  common  loveliness  in  the  phenomena 
of  the  elements  and  the  seasons,  and  this 
gave  distinction  to  his   mere  description 
and  record  of  fact;  in  the  second  place  he 
often   felt  in  himself  moods   induced  by 


COLERIDGE.  37 

nature,  but  yet  subjective,  —  states  of  his 
own  spirit,  which  sometimes  deepened  the 
charm  of  night,  for  example,  by  his  enjoy- 
ment of  its  placid  aspects,  and  sometimes 
imparted  to  the  external  world  a  despair 
reflected  from  his  personal  melancholy. 
In  his  direct  treatment  of  nature,  how- 
ever, as  Mr.  Stopford  Brooke  points  out, 
he  seldom  achieves  more  than  a  catalogue  of 
his  sensations,  which  though  touched  with 
imaginative  detail  are  never  lifted  and 
harmonized  into  lyrical  unity;  though  he 
can  moralize  nature  in  Wordsworth's 
fashion,  when  he  does  so  the  result  re- 
mains Wordsworth's  and  is  stamped  with 
that  poet's  originality;  and  in  his  own 
original  work  Coleridge  never  equaled' 
either  the  genius  of  Slielley,  who  can-s 
identify  nature  with  himself,  or  the  charm 
of  Tennyson,  who  can  at  least  parallel 
nature's  phenomena  with  his  own  human 
moods.  Coleridge  would  not  be  thought 
of  as  a  poet  of  nature,  except  in  so  far  as 
he  describes  what  he  observes  in  the  way 
of  record,  or  gives  a  metaphj'sical  inter- 
pretation to  phenomena.  This  is  the  more 
remarkable  because  he  had  to  an  eminent 
degree  that  intellectual  power,  that  over- 


38  COLERIDGE. 

mastering  desire  of  the  mind,  to  rationalize 
the  facts  of  life.  It  was  this  quality  that 
made  him  a  philosopher,  an  analyst,  a 
critic  on  the  great  lines  of  Aristotle,  seek- 
ing to  impose  an  order  of  ethics  and  meta- 
physics on  all  artistic  productions.  But 
in  those  poems  in  which  he  describes 
nature  directly  and  without  metaphysical 
thought,  there  is  no  trace  of  anything 
more  than  a  sensuous  order  of  his  own  per- 
ceptions. Beautiful  and  often  unique  as 
his  nature  poems  are,  they  are  not  creative. 
They  are  rather  in  the  main  autobio- 
graphic; and  it  is  surprising  to  notice 
how  large  a  proportion  of  his  verse  is  thus 
autobiographic,  not  in  those  phases  of  his 
own  life  which  may  be,  or  at  least  are 
thought  of,  as  representative  of  human 
life  in  the  mass,  but  which  are  personal," 
such  as  the  lines  written  after  hearing 
Wordsworth  read  the  Prelude,  or  those 
entitled  Dejection.  When  his  verse  is 
not  confined  to  autobiographic  expres- 
sion, it  is  often  a  product  of  his  interest 
in  his  friends  or  in  his  family.  What  is 
not  personal  in  it,  of  this  sort,  is  apt  to 
be  domestic  or  social. 

If  we  turn  from  the  poems  of  nature  to 


COLERIDGE.  39 

those  concerned  with  man,  a  similar  shal- 
lowness, either  of  interest  or  of  power, 
appears.  He  was  in  early  years  a  radical; 
he  was  stirred  by  the  Revolution  in  Francef" 
and  he  was  emotionally  charged  with  the 
ideas  of  the  time,  —  ideas  of  equality,  fra- 
ternity, and  liberty.  But  this  interest 
died  out,  as  is  shown  by  his  political 
verse.  He  had  none  but  a  social  and  a 
philosophical  interest  in  any  case.  Man, 
the  individual,  did  not  at  any  time  attract 
him.  There  was  nothing  dramatic  in  his 
genius,  in  the  narrow  and  exact  sense;  he 
did  not  engage  his  curiosity  or  his  philoso- 
phy in  individual  fortunes.  It  results 
from  this  limitation  that  his  verse  lacks 
human  interest  of  the  dramatic  kind.  The 
truth  was  that  he  was  interested  in 
thought  rather  than  in  deeds,  in  human 
nature  rather  than  in  its  concrete  pity  and 
terror.  Thus  he  did  not  seize  on  life 
itself  as  the  material  of  his  imagination 
and  reflection.  In  the  case  of  man  as  in 
the  case  of  nature  he  gives  us  only  an 
egoistic  account,  telling  us  of  his  own 
private  fortune,  his  fears,  pains,  and  de- 
spairs, but  only  as  a  diary  gives  them ;  as 
he  did  not  transfer  his  nature  impressions 


40  COLERIDGE. 

into  the  world  of  creative  art,  so  he  did 
not  transfer  his  personal  experiences  into 
that  world. 

What  has  been  said  would  perhaps  be 
accepted,  were  it  not  for  the  existence 
of  those  poems.  The  Ancient  Mariner, 
Christabel,  Kubla  Khan,  which  are  the 
marvelous  creations  of  his  genius.  In  "^ 
these  it  will  be  said  there  is  both  a  world — 
of  nature  new  created,  and  a  dramatic 
method  and  interest.  It  is  enough  for  the 
purpose  of  the  analysis  if  it  be  granted 
that  nowhere  else  in  Coleridge's  work, 
except  in  these  and  less  noticeably  in  a 
few  other  instances,  do  these  high  charac- 
teristics occur.  The  very  point  which  is 
here  to  be  brought  out  is  that  Coleridge 
applied  that  intellectual  power,  that  over- 
mastering desire  of  the  mind  to  rationalize 
the  phenomena  of  life,  which  has  been 
mentioned  as  his  great  mental  trait,  — 
that  he  applied  this  faculty  with  different 
degrees  of  power  at  different  times,  so 
that  his  poetry  falls  naturally  into  higher 
and  inferior  categories;  in  the  autobio- 
graphic verse,  in  the  political  and  dra- 
matic verse  which  form  so  large  a  part  of 
his  work,  it  appears  that  he  did  not  have 


COLERIDGE.  41 

sufficient  feeling  or  exercise  sufficient 
power  to  raise  it  out  of  the  lower  levels 
of  composition ;  in  his  great  works  of  con- 
structive and  impersonal  art,  of  moral 
intensity  or  romantic  beauty  and  fascina- 
tion, he  did  so  exercise  the  creative  im- 
agination as  to  make  these  of  the  highest 
rank,  or  at  least  one  of  them. 

The  Ancient  Mariner,  apart  from  its 
many  minor  merits,  has  this  distinction  in 
Coleridge's  work,  —  it  is  a  poem  of  per- 
fect unity.  Christabel  is  a  fragment, 
Kubla  Khan  is  a  glimpse;  and  though 
the  Ode  to  France,  Love,  Youth  and 
Age,  and  possibly  a  few  other  short 
pieces,  have  this  highest  artistic  virtue 
.of  unity,  yet  in  them  it  is  of  a  simpler 
kind.  The  Ancient  Mariner,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  a  marvel  of  construction  in  that 
its  unity  is  less  complex  than  manifold; 
it  exists,  however  tlie  form  be  examined. 
In  the  merely  external  sense,  the  telling 
of  the  tale  to  the  Wedding  Guest,  with 
the  fact  that  the  wedding  is  going  on, 
gives  it  unity;  in  the  merely  internal 
sense,  the  moral  lesson  of  the  salvation  of 
the  slayer  of  the  albatross  by  the  medium 
of  love  felt  toward  living  things,  subtly 


42  COLERIDGE. 

yet  lucidly  worked  out  as  the  notion  is, 
gives  it  unity:  but  in  still  other  ways,  as 
a  story  of  connected  and  consequential  in- 
cidents with  a  plot,  a  change  of  fortune,  a 
climax,  and  the  other  essentials  of  this 
species  of  tale-telling,  it  has  unity;  and  if 
its  conception  either  of  the  physical  or  the 
ethical  world  be  analyzed,  these  too  —  and 
these  are  the  fundamental  things  —  are 
found  consistent  wholes.  It  nevertheless" 
remains  true  that  this  sj^stem  of  nature  as 
a  vitalized  but  not  humanized  mode  of 
life,  with  its  bird,  its  spirit,  its  magical 
powers,  is  not  the  nature  that  we  know  or 
believe  to  be,  —  it  is  a  modern  presenta- 
tion of  an  essentially  primitive  and  ani- 
mistic belief;  and  similarly  this  system 
of  human  life,  —  if  the  word  human  can 
be  applied  to  it,  with  its  dead  men,  .its 
skeleton  ship,  its  spirit  sailors,  its  whole 
miracle  of  spectral  being,  —  is  not  the  life 
we  know  or  believe  to  be;  it  is  an  incan- 
tation, a  simulacrum.  It  may  still  be  true 
therefore  that  the  imaginative  faculty  of 
Coleridge  was  not  applied  either  to  nature 
or  human  life,  in  the  ordinary  sense.  And 
this  it  is  that  constitutes  the  uniqueness 
of  the  poem,  and  its  wonderful  fascination. 


COLERIDGE.  43 

Coleridge  fell  heir,  by  the  accidents  of 
time  and  the  revolutions  of  taste,  to  the 
ballad  style,  its  simplicity,  directness,  and 
narrative  power;  he  also  was  most  attracted 
to  the  machinery  of  the  supernatural,  the 
weird,  the  terrible,  almost  to  the  grotesque 
and  horrid,  as  these  literary  motives  came 
into  fashion  in  the  crude  beginnings  of 
romanticism  in  that  time ;  his  subtle  mind, 
his  fine  senses,  his  peculiar  susceptibility 
to  the  mystic  and  shadowy  in  nature,  —  as 
shown  by  his  preference  of  the  moonlight, 
dreamy,  or  night  aspects  of  real  nature,  to 
its  brilliant  beauties  in  the  waking  world, 
—  gave  him  ease  and  finesse  in  the  han- 
dling of  such  subject-matter;  and  he  lived 
late  enough  to  know  that  all  this  eerie 
side  of  human  experience  and  imaginative 
capacity,  inherited  from  primeval  ages  but 
by  no  means  yet  deprived  of  plausibility, 
could  be  effectively  used  only  as  an  alle- 
goric or  scenic  setting  of  what  should  be 
truth  to  the  ethical  sense;  he  combined 
one  of  the  highest  lessons  of  advanced 
civilization,  one  of  the  last  results  of  spir- 
itual perception,  —  the  idea  of  love  toward 
life  in  an}'  form,  —  with  the  animistic 
beliefs   and   supernatural    fancies    of   the 


44  COLERIDGE. 

crude  ages  of  the  senses.  This  seems  to 
be  the  substantial  matter;  and  in  this 
he  was,  to  repeat  Shelley's  phrase,  the 
" subtle-souled  psychologist."  The  mate- 
rial of  his  imagination,  on  the  sensuous 
side,  was  of  the  slightest:  it  was  the  su- 
pernaturalism  of  the  romantic  movement, 
somewhat  modified  by  being  placed  in  con- 
nection with  the  animal  world;  and  he 
put  this  to  use  as  a  means  of  illustrating 
spiritual  truth.  He  thus  became  the  first 
of  those  who  have  employed  the  super- 
natural in  our  recent  literature,  without 
losing  credence  for  it,  as  an  allegory  of 
psychological  states,  moral  facts,  or  illu- 
sions real  to  the  eye  that  sees  them  and 
having  some  logical  relation  to  the  past  of 
the  individual;  of  such  writers  Hawthorne 
and  Poe  are  eminent  examples,  and  both 
of  them,  it  may  be  remarked,  are  writers 
in  whom  temperament  rather  than  char- 
acter is  the  ground  of  their  creative  work. 
The  intimate  kinship  between  imagination 
so  directed  and  the  speculative  philo- 
sophical temper  is  plain  to  see.  In 
Christabel,  on  the  other  hand,  the 
moral  substance  is  not  apparent:  the  place 
filled  by  the  moral  ideas  which   are   the 


COLERIDGE.  45 

centres  of  the  narrative  in  The  Ancient 
Mariner,  is  taken  here  by  emotional  situ- 
ations ;  but  the  supernaturalism  is  practi- 
cally the  same  in  both  poems,  and  in  both 
is  associated  with  that  mystery  of  the 
animal  world  to  man,  most  concentrated 
and  vivid  in  the  fascination  ascribed  tra- 
ditionally to  the  snake,  which  is  the 
animal  motive  in  Christabel  as  the 
goodness  of  the  albatross  is  in  The  Ancient 
Mariner.  In  these  poems  the  good  and 
the  bad  omens  that  ancient  augurs  minded 
are  made  again  dominant  over  men's 
imagination.  Such  are  the  signal  and 
unique  elements  in  these  poems,  which 
have  besides  that  wealth  of  beauty  in 
detail,  of  fine  diction,  of  liquid  melody, 
of  sentiment,  thought,  and  image,  which 
belongs  only  to  poetry  of  the  highest  order, 
and  which  is  too  obvious  to  require  any 
comment.  Kubla  Khan  is  a  poem  of  the  ' 
same  kind,  in  which  the  mystical  effect  is 
given  almost  wholly  by  landscape;  it  is 
to  The  Ancient  Mariner  and  Christabel 
what  protoplasm  is  to  highly  organized 
cells. 

If    it    be    recognized,    then,    that    the- 
imagery  of  Coleridge  in  the  characteristic 


46  COLERIDGE. 

parts  of  these  cardinal  poems  is  as  pure 
allegory,  is  as  remote  from  nature  or 
man,  as  is  the  machinery  of  fairy-land  and 
chivalry  in  Spenser,  for  example,  and  he 
obtains  credibility  by  the  psychological 
and  ethical  truth  presented  in  this  im- 
agery, it  is  not  surprising  that  his  work 
is  small  in  amount;  for  the  method  is  not 
only  a  difficult  one,  but  the  poetic  machin- 
ery itself  is  limited  and  meagre.  The 
poverty  of  the  subject-matter  is  manifest, 
and  the  restrictions  to  its  successful  use 
are  soon  felt.  It  may  well  be  doubted 
whether  Christabel  would  have  gained 
by  being  finished.  In  The  Ancient 
Mariner  the  isolation  of  the  man  is  a 
great  advantage;  if  there  had  been  any 
companion  for  him,  the  illusion  could  not 
have  been  entire :  as  it  is,  what  he  experi- 
ences has  the  wholeness  and  truth  within 
itself  of  a  dream,  or  of  a  madman's  world, 
—  there  is  no  standard  of  appeal  outside 
of  his  own  senses  and  mind,  no  real  world ; 
but  in  Christabel  the  serpentine  fable 
goes  on  in  a  world  of  fact  and  action,  and 
as  soon  as  the  course  of  the  story  involved 
this  fable  in  the  probabilities  and  actual 
occurrences  of  life,  it  might  well  be  that 


COLERIDGE.  47 

the  tale  would  have  turned  into  one  of 
simple  enchantment  and  magic,  as  seems 
likely  from  what  has  been  told  of  its  con- 
tinuation ;  certainly  it  could  not  have 
equaled  the  earlier  poem,  or  have  been  in 
the  same  kind  with  it,  unless  the  un- 
earthly magic,  the  spell,  were  finally  com- 
pletely dissolved  into  the  world  of  moral 
truth  as  is  the  case  with  The  Ancient 
Mariner.  Coleridge  found  it  still  more 
impossible  to  continue  Kubla  Khan.  It 
seems  a  fair  inference  to  conclude  that 
Coleridge's  genius,  however  it  suffered 
from  the  misfortunes  and  ills  of  his  life, 
was  in  these  works  involved  in  a  field, 
however  congenial,  yet  of  narrow  range 
and  infertile  in  itself.  In  poetic  stjde  it 
is  to  be  observed  that  he  kept  what  he  had 
gained;  the  turbid  diction  of  the  earlier 
period  never  came  back  to  trouble  him, 
and  the  cadences  he  had  formed  still  gave 
their  music  to  his  verse.  The  change,  the 
decline,  was  not  in  his  power  of  style ;  it 
was  in  his  power  of  imagination,  if  at  all, 
but  the  fault  may  have  laid  in  the  capaci- 
ties of  the  subject-matter.  A  similar 
thing  certainly  happened  in  his  briefer 
ballad   poetry,    in   that    of    which    Love, 


48  COLERIDGE. 

The  Three  Graces,  Alice  Du  Clos, 
and  The  Dark  Ladie,  are  examples; 
the  matter  there,  the  machinery  .of  the 
romantic  ballad,  was  no  longer  capable  of 
use ;  that  sort  of  literature  was  dead  from 
—the  exhaustion  of  its  motives'.  The  great 
Ode  to  France,  in  which  he  reached  his 
highest  point  of  eloquent  and  passionate 
expression,  seems  to  mark  the  extinction 
in  himself  of  the  revolutionary  impulse. 
On  the  whole,  while  the  excellence  of 
much  of  the  remainder  of  his  verse,  even 
in  later  years,  is  acknowledged,  and  its 
originality  in  several  instances,  may  it  not 
be  that  in  his  greatest  work  Coleridge 
came  to  an  end  because  of  an  impossibility 
in  the  kind  itself?  The  supernatural  is 
an  accessory  rather  than  a  main  element  in 
the  interpretation  of  life  which  literary 
genius  undertakes ;  Coleridge  so  subordi- 
nates it  here  by  making  it  contributory 
to  a  moral  truth;  but  such  a  practice 
would  seem  to  be  necessarily  incidental 
to  a  poet  who  was  also  so  intellectual 
as  Coleridge,  and  not  to  be  adopted 
as  a  permanent  method  of  self-expres- 
sion. 

From  whatever  cause,  the  fact  was  that 


COLERIDGE.  49 

Coleridge  ceased  to  create  in  poetry,  and 
fell  back  on  that  fluent,  manifold,   volu- 
minous faculty  he  possessed  of  absorbing 
and  giving  out  ideas  in  vast  quantities,  as 
it  were  by  bulk.     He  attended  especially 
to  the  theory  of  art  as  he  found  it  illus- 
trated in  the  greatest  poets,  and  he  popu- 
larized among  literary  men  a  certain  body 
of  doctrine  regarding  criticism,  its  growth 
and  methods ;  and  in  later  years  he  worked 
out  metaphysical  theological  views  which 
he  inculcated  in  ways  which  won  for  him 
recognition  as  a  practical  influence  in  con- 
temporary church  opinion.     In  these  last 
years  of  his  lecturing  and  discoursing  in 
private,  the  figure  he  makes  is  pathetic, 
though  Carlyle  describes   it  with  a  grim 
humor,  as  any  one  may  read  in  the  Life 
of    Sterling  :    over    against    that    figure 
should  be  set  the  descriptions  of  the  young 
Coleridge   by  Dorothy  Wordsworth    and 
Lamb;  and  after  these  perhaps  the  con- 
trast   which     Coleridge     himself     draws 
between    his    spirit    and    his   body   may 
enable  a  reader  to  fuse  the  two  —  youth 
and  asre  —  into  one.     Whatever  were  the 
weaknesses  of  his  nature  and  the  trials  of 
his  life,  he  was  deeply  loved  by  friends  of 


50  COLERIDGE. 

many  different  minds,  who  if  they  grew 
cold,  had  paid  at  least  once  this  tribute  to 
the  charm,  the  gentleness,  and  the  delight 
of  his  human  companionship. 


SHELLEY'S  POETRY:  A  SKETCH. 

Shelley  himself  described  his  genius 
as  in  the  main  a  moral  one^and  in  this  he 
made  a  correct  analysis.  It  was  fed  by 
ideas  derived  from  books,  and  sustained 
by  a  sympathy  so  intense  as  to  become  a 
passion  for  moral  aims.  He  was  intellectu- 
ally the  child  of  the  Revolution ;  and  from 
the  moment  that  he  drew  thoughtful 
breath  he  was  a  disciple  of  the  radicals  in 
England.  The  regeneration  of  mankind 
was  the  cause  that  kindled  his  enthusi- 
asm; and  the  changes  he  looked  for  were 
social  as  well  as  political.  He  spent  his 
strength  in  advocacy  of  the  doctrines  of 
democracy,  and  in  hostility  to  its  obvious 
opponents  established  in  the  authority  of 
Church  and  State,  and  in  custom;  he  held 
the  most  advanced  position,  not  only  in 
religion,  but  in  respect  to  the  institution 
of  marriage,  the  use  of  property,  and  the 
welfare  of  the  masses  of  mankind.  The 
first  complete  expression  of  his  opinion, 
the   precipitate   from  the  ferment  of  his 

51 


52      SHELLEY'S    POETRY:    A    SKETCH. 

boyish  years,  was  given  in  Queen  Mab, 
a  crude  poem  after  the  style  of  Southey, 
by  which  he  was  long  best  and  most  un- 
favorably known;  he  recognized  its  imma- 
turity, and  sought  to  suppress  a  pirated 
edition  published  in  his  last  years:  the 
violent  prejudice  against  him  in  England 
as  an  atheist  was  largely  due  to  this  early 
work,  with  its  long  notes,  in  connection 
with  the  decision  of  the  court  taking  from 
him  the  custody  of  his  children.  The  sec- 
ond expression  of  his  opinions,  similar  in 
scope,  was  given  five  years  later  in  The 
Revolt  of  Islam,  a  Spenserian  poem  in 
twelve  books.  In  this  work  the  increase 
of  his  poetic  faculty  is  shown  by  his  denial 
of  a  didactic  aim,  and  by  the  series  of 
scenes  from  nature  and  human  life  which 
is  the  web  of  the  verse ;  but  the  subject  of 
the  poem  is  the  regeneration  of  society, 
and  the  intellectual  impulse  which  sustains 
it  is  political  and  philanthropic.  Up  to 
the  time  of  its  composition  the  main  liter- 
ary influence  that  governed  him  was  Latin : 
now  he  began  to  feel  the  power  of  Greek 
literature ;  and  partly  in  making  responses 
to  it,  and  partly  by  the  expansion  of  his 
mind,  he  revolutionized  his  poetic  method. 


SHELLEY'S    POETRY:    A    SKETCH.      53 

The  result  was  that  in  the  third  and  great- 
est of  his  works  of  this  kind,  Prometheus 
Unbound,  lie  developed  a  new  type  in 
English,  —  the  lyrical  drama.  The  sub- 
ject is  still  the  regeneration  of  society: 
but  the  tale  has  grown  into  the  drama; 
the  ideas  have  generated  abstract  imper- 
sonations which  have  more  likeness  to  ele- 
mental beings,  to  Titanic  and  mythological 
creations,  than  to  humanity;  while  the 
interest  intellectually  is  still  held  within 
the  old  limits  of  the  general  cause  of  man- 
kind. The  same  principles,  the  same  con- 
victions, the  same  aims,  fused  in  one  moral 
enthusiasm,  are  here :  but  a  transformation 
has  come  over  their  embodiment,  —  imagi- 
nation has  seized  upon  them,  a  new  lyrical 
music  has  penetrated  and  sublimated  them, 
and  the  poem  so  engendered  and  born  is 
different  in  kind  from  those  that  went 
before ;  it  holds  a  unique  place  in  the  lit- 
erature of  the  world,  and  is  the  most  pas- 
sionate dream  of  the  perfect  social  ideal 
ever  moulded  in  verse.  In  a  fourth  work, 
Hellas,  Shelley  applied  a  similar  method 
in  an  effort  to  treat  the  Greek  Revolution 
as  a  single  instance  of  the  victory  of  the 
general  cause  which  he  had  most  at  heart ; 


54      SHELLEY'S    POETRY:    A    SKETCH. 

and  in  several  shorter  poems,  especially 
odes,  lie  from  time  to  time  took  up  the 
same  theme.  The  ideal  he  sets  fprtli  in 
all  these  writings,  clarifying  as  it  goes  on, 
is  not  different  from  the  millennium  of 
poets  and  thinkers  in  all  ages :  justice  and 
liberty,  love  the  supreme  law,  are  the  ends 
to  be  achieved,  and  moral  excellence  with 
universal  happiness  is  the  goal  of  all. 

In  the  works  which  have  been  men- 
tioned, and  which  contain  the  most  of 
Shelley's  substantial  thought,  the  moral 
prepossession  of  his  mind  is  most  manifest ; 
it  belonged  to  the  conscious  part  of  his 
being,  and  would  naturally  be  foremost  in 
his  most  deliberate  writing.  It  was,  in 
my  judgment,  the  central  thing  in  his 
genius;  but  genius  in  working  itself  out 
displays  special  faculties  of  many  kinds, 
which  must  be  noticed  in  their  own 'right. 
Shelley  is,  for  example,  considered  as  pre- 
eminently a  poet  of  nature.  His  suscepti- 
bility to  sensuous  impressions  was  very 
great,  his  response  to  them  in  love  of 
beauty  and  in  joy  in  them  was  constant; 
and  out  of  his  intimacy  with  nature  came 
not  merely  descriptive  power  and  the  habit 
of  interpreting  emotion  through  natural 


SHELLEY'S    POETRY:    A    SKETCH.      55 

images,  such  as  many  poets  have  com- 
passed, but  a  peculiar  faculty  often  noticed 
by  his  critics,  usually  called  the  myth- 
making  faculty,  which  is  thought  of  as 
racial  rather  than  individual.  During  his 
residence  in  Italy  he  was  steeped  in  the 
Greek  spirit  as  it  survives  in  the  philoso- 
phy and  poetry  of  antiquity ;  and  it  was  in 
harmony  with  his  mood  that  he  should 
vitalize  the  elements.  What  is  extraor- 
dinary is  the  success,  the  primitive  ease, 
the  magic,  with  which  he  did  so.  In  the 
simple  instances  which  recur  to  every 
one's  memory  —  The  Skylark,  The  Cloud, 
the  Ode  to  the  West  Wind  —  he  has 
rendered  the  sense  of  non-human,  of  ele-* 
mental  being;  and  in  the  characters  of 
Prometheus  Unbound  —  in  Asia  especially 
—  he  has  created  such  beings,  to  which 
the  spirits  of  the  moon  and  earth  as  he 
evoked  them  seem  natural  concomitants, 
and  to  them  he  has  given  reality  for  the 
imagination.  It  is  largely  because  he 
dealt  in  this  witchery,  this  matter  of  pri- 
meval illusion,  that  he  gives  to  some  minds 
the  impression  of  dwelling  in  an  imaginary 
and  unsubstantial  world;  and  the  flood  of 
light  and  glory  of  color  which  he  exhales 


56      SHELLEY'S   POETEY :    A    SKETCH. 

as  an  atmosphere  about  the  substance  of 
the  verse,  dazzle  and  often  bewilder  the 
reader  whose  eyes  are  yet  to  be  familiarized 
with  the  shapes  and  air  of  his  scene.  But 
with  few  exceptions,  while  using  this 
creative  power  by  poetic  instinct,  he 
brings  back  the  verse  at  the  end,  whether 
in  the  lyrics  or  the  longer  works,  to  "  the 
hopes  and  fears  of  men."  In  the  ordinary 
delineation  of  nature  as  it  appears,  his 
touch  is  sure  and  accurate,  with  a  regard 
for  detail  which  shows  close  observation, 
and  a  frequent  minuteness  which  shows 
the  contemporary  of  Coleridge  and  Words- 
worth. The  opening  passage  of  Julian 
and  Maddalo,  the  lines  at  Pisa  on  the 
bridge,  and  the  fragment  Marenghi,  are 
three  widely  different  examples. 

Shelley  was  also  strongly  attracted  by 
the  narrative  form  for  its  own  sake.  He 
was  always  fond  of  a  story  from  the  days 
of  his  boyhood;  and  though  the  romantic 
cast  of  fiction  in  his  youth,  both  in  prose 
and  verse,  might  indicate  a  lack  of  interest 
in  life,  in  the  taste  for  this  he  was  not 
different  from  the  time  he  lived  in,  and 
the  way  to  reality  lay  then  through  this 
path.       Rosalind  and   Helen  was  a   tale 


SHELLEY'S    POETRY:    A    SKETCH.      57 

like  others  of  its  kind,  made  up  of  roman- 
tic elements;  but  the  instinct  which  led 
Shelley  to  tell  it,  as  he  had  told  still  cruder 
stories  in  his  first  romances  at  Eton,  was 
fundamental  in  him,  and  led  him  after- 
ward, still  further  refining  his  matter,  to 
weave  out  of  airy  nothing  The  Witch  of 
Atlas  almost  at  the  close  of  his  career. 
The  important  matter  is,  to  connect  with 
these  narrative  beginnings  in  prose  and 
verse  his  serious  dramatic  work,  which  has 
for  its  prime  example  The  Cenci,  other- 
wise standing  too  far  apart  from  his  life. 
In  this  dnima  he  undertook  to  deal  with 
the  reality  of  human  nature  in  its  most 
difficult  literary  form,  the  tragedy;  and 
the  success  with  which  he  suppressed  his 
ordinary  exuberance  of  imagery  and  phrase 
and  kept  to  a  severe  restraint,  at  the  same 
time  producing  the  one  conspicuous  exam- 
ple of  tragedy  in  his  century  in  England, 
has  been  often  wondered  at.  In  the  un- 
finished Charles  I.  he  made  a  second 
attempt;  while  in  the  various  dramatic 
fragments  other  than  this  he  seems  to  have 
contemplated  a  new  form  of  romantic 
drama.  It  seems  to  me  that  this  line  of 
his     development     has     been    too    little 


58      SHELLEY'S    POETRY:    A    SKETCH. 

studied;  but  there   is  space  here  only  to 
make  the  suggestion. 

Another  subordinate  division  of  tShel-  - 
ley's  work  lies  in  his  treatment  of  the  ideal 
of  individual  nobility  and  happiness  apart 
from  society.  Of  course  in  the  character 
of  Laon,  and  on  the  grand  scale  in  that  of 
Prometheus,  he  set  forth  traits  of  the  in- 
dividual ideal;  but  in  both  instances  they 
were  social  reformers,  and  had  a  relation 
to  mankind.  In  Alastor,  on  the  con- 
trary, the  individual  is  dealt  with  for  his 
own  sole  sake,  and  the  youth  is  drawn  in 
lines  of  melancholy  beauty ;  he  was  of  the 
same  race  as  Laon,  but  existed  only  in  his 
own  poetic  unhappiness ;  of  the  same  race 
also  was  Prince  Athanase,  .but  the  poem 
is  too  unfinished  to  permit  us  to  say  more 
than  that  as  he  is  disclosed,  he  is  only 
an  individual.  In  Epipsychidion  the 
same  character  reappears  as  a  persistent 
type  in  Shelley's  mind,  with  the  traits 
that  he  most  valued:  and  the  conclusion 
there  is  the  union  of  the  lover  and  his 
beloved  in  the  enchanted  isle,  far  from  the 
world,  whicli  also  is  familiar  to  readers  of 
Shelley  in  other  poems  as  a  persistent  idea 
in  his  mind.     In  these  poems  one  finds 


SHELLEY^ S    POETRY:    A    SKETCH.      59 

the  recoil  of  Shelley's  mind  from  the  task 
of  reform  he  had  undertaken,  the  antipodes 
of  the  social  leader  in  the  lonely  exile 
from  all  but  the  one  kindred  spirit,  the 
sense  of  weariness,  of  defeat,  of  despair^ 
over  the  world  —  the  refuge.  It  is  nat- 
ural, consequently,  to  feel  that  Shelley 
himself  is  near  in  these  characters;  that 
they  are  successive  incarnations  of  his 
spirit,  and  frankly  such.  They  are  auto- 
biographic with  conscious  art,  and  stand 
only  at  one  remove  from  those  lyrics  of 
personal  emotion  which  are  unconscious, 
the  cries  of  the  spirit  which  have  sung 
themselves  into  the  heart  of  the  world. 
Upon  these  lyrics,  which  stand  apart  from 
his  deliberate  work,  —  impulsive,  overflow- 
ing, irresistible  in  their  spontaneity,  —  it 
may  be  granted  that  his  popular  fame  rests. 
Many  of  them  are  singularly  perfect  in 
poetic  form  naturally  developed;  they 
have  the  music  which  is  as  unforgettable 
as  the  tones  of  a  human  voice,  as  unmis- 
takable, as  personal,  and  which  has  winged 
them  to  fly  through  the  world.  They  make 
one  forget  all  the  rest  in  Shelley  himself, 
and  they  express  his  world-weary  yet  still 
aspiring  soul.     The  most  perfect  of  them. 


60      SHELLEY'S    POETEY :    A'  SKETCH. 

in  my  judgment,  is  the  Ode  to  the  West  — 
Wind:  in  form  it  is  faultless;  and  it 
blends  in  one  expression  the  power  he  had 
to  interpret  nature's  elemental  life,  the 
pathos  of  his  own  spirit,  — portrayed  more 
nobly  than  in  the  cognate  passage  of  the 
Adonais,    because    more    unconscious    of 

itself,  — and  the  supreme  desire  he  had  to  "^ . 

serve  the  world  with  those  thoughts  blown 
now  through  the  world :  — 

"  Ashes  and  sparks,  my  words  among  mankind." 

No  other  of  the  lyrics  seems  to  me 
so  comprehensive,  so  adequate.  The 
Adonais  only  can  compare  with  it  for 
personal  power,  for  the  penetration  of 
the  verse  with  Shelley's  spirit  in  its  elo- 
quent passion.  Of  that  elegy  the  poetry 
is  so  direct,  and  the  charm  so  immediate 
and  constant,  that  it  needs  no  other  men- 
tion, further  than  to  say  that  like  the 
Sensitive  Plant,  it  has  more  affinity 
with  Shelley's  lyrics  than  with  his  longer 
works. 

Such  are  some  of  the  characteristics  of 
Shelley  and  the  relations  between  his  more 
important  works.  There  is  much  more  to 
say;  but  I  will   add   only  that   in  what 


SHELLEY'S    POETRY:    A    SKETCH.      61 

seems  to  me  a  cardinal  point  in  the  criti- 
cism of  poetry,  — the  poet's  conception  of 
■womanhood,  —  of  all  the  poets  of  the  cen- 
tury in  England,  Shelley  is  approached 
only  by  Burns  in  tenderness,  and  excels 
Burns  in  nobleness  of  feeling.  The  repu- 
tation of  Shelley  in  his  lifetime  was  but 
slight  in  the  world;  and  it  emerged  only 
by  slow  stages  from  the  neglect  and  oblo- 
quy which  were  his  portion  while  he  lived- 
and  when  he  died.  In  the  brief  recital  of 
the  events  of  his  life,  it  is  obvious  at  a 
glance  that  there  is  much  which  needs  ex- 
planation and  defense.  The  best  defense 
was  to  throw  all  possible  light  upon  his 
career,  and  that  was  done  by  all  who  knew 
him;  so  that  his  life  is  more  minutely 
exposed  from  boyhood  to  his  'death  than 
that  of  any  other  English  poet.  As  a 
consequence  of  this,  opinion  regarding 
him  has  been  much  modified ;  and  though 
it  may  still  be  stern,  it  is  now  seldom 
harsh.  The  opinions  which  were  regarded 
as  of  evil  influence,  and  the  acts  which 
were  condemned  as  wrong  acts,  are  open 
to  all  to  understand  and  pass  judgment 
upon,  as  they  are  related  in  many  books ; 
and  in  respect  to  these,  each  will  have  his 


62      SHELLEY'S    POETRY:    A    SKETCH. 

own  mind.  Whatever  be  the  judgment,  it 
must  be  agreed  that  the  century  has 
brought  fame  to  Shelley,  as  a  poet  .of  the 
highest  class  and  of  a  rare  kind;  and  that 
as  a  man  he  has  been  an  inspiration  and 
almost  a  creed  in  many  lives,  and  has  won 
respect  and  affection  from  many  hearts, 
and  a  singular  devotion  from  some  akin  to 
that  which  his  friends  felt  toward  him. 
He  has  been  loved  as  it  is  given  to  few 
strangers  to  be  loved,  — but  that  is  apart 
from  his  poetry. 


I 


LANDOR. 

Many  of  the  most  sensitive  and  dis- 
criminating critics  of  this  century  have,  in 
the  suffrage  for  fame,  listed  themselves  for 
Landor.  He  seemed  almost  to  achieve  im- 
mortality within  his  lifetime,  so  continu- 
ously was  the  subtle  appreciation  of  the  best 
yielded  to  him,  from  the  far-off  years  when 
Shelley  used,  at  Oxford,  to  declaim  with 
enthusiasm  passages  from  Gebir,  to  the 
time,  that  seems  as  yesterday,  when  Swin- 
burne made  his  pilgrimage  to  Italy,  to  offer 
his  tribute  of  adoration  to  the  old  man  at 
the  close  of  his  solitary  and  troubled  career  ; 
and  still  each  finer  spirit, 

"  As  he  passes,  turns, 
And  bids  fair  peace  be  to  his  sable  shroud." 

During  his  long  life  he  saw  the  springtime, 
and  outlived  the  harvest,  of  the  great  poetic 
revival,  and  the  labor  of  the  Victorian  poets 

63 


64  LANDOB. 

of  the  aftermath  was  half  accomplished  be- 
fore his  death ;  but  from  all  these  powerful 
contemporary  influences  he  was  free.     He 
remained  apart ;  and  this  single  fact,  attest- 
ing, as  it  does,  extraordinary  self-possession 
and  assurance  of  purpose,  suffices  to  make 
his  character  interesting,  even  were  his  work 
of  inferior  worth.     As  yet,   however,  even 
to  the  minds  of  cultivated  men,  he  is  hard- 
ly more  than  a  great  figure.     He  is  known, 
praised,    and    remembered    for    particular 
scenes,  dramatic  fragments,  occasional  lyrics, 
quatrains.     This  is  the  natural  fate  of  a  dis- 
cursive   writer.     It  matters    not  that  Lan- 
dor  was  wide  ranging ;   it  matters  not  what 
spoils  of  thought,  what  images  of  beauty,  he 
brought    from    those    far    eastern    uplands 
which  it  was  his  boast  to  haunt:  he  failed  to 
give  unity  to  his  work,  to  give  interest  to 
large  portions  of  it,  to  command  public  at- 
.  tention  for  it  as  a  whole.     Indeed,  his  work 
as  a  whole  does  not  command  the  attention 
even  of  the  best.     What  does  survive,  too, 
lives  only  in  the  favor  of  a  small  circle.    He 
forfeited   popular    fame    at    the    beginning, 
when    he    selected    themes  that  presuppose 
rare  qualities  in  his  audience,  and  adopted 
an  antique  style  ;  but  such  considerations, 


LANDOB.  65 

at  least  in  their  naked  statement,  do  not  tell 
the  whole  story.     Other  poets  have  missed 
immediate   applause   by  dealing   with    sub- 
jects that  assumed*  unusual  largeness  of  soul, 
range  of  sympathy,  and  refinement  of  taste 
in  their  readers :  like  Shelley,  singing  of  un- 
heeded hopes  and  fears  to  which  the  world 
was  to  be  wrought ;  like  Wordsworth,  nar- 
rating the  myth  of  Troy.     Other  poets,  in 
style,  have  set  forth  the  object  plainly,  and 
left  it  to  work  its  will  on  the  heart  and  im- 
agination, unaided  by  the  romantic  spell,  the 
awakening  glow,  the  silent  but  imperative 
suggestion,  the  overmastering  passion    that 
takes  heart   and   imagination   captive ;  and 
they  have  not  lost  their  reward.     A  remote 
theme,  an  impersonal  style,  are  not  of  them- 
selves able  to  condemn  a  poet  to  long  neg- 
lect.    They  may  make  wide  appreciation  of 
him  impossible  ;  they  may  explain  the  indif- 
ference of  an  imperfectly  educated  public; 
but  they  do  not  account  for  the  fact  that 
Landor  is  to  be  read,  even  by  his  admirers, 
in  a  book  of   selections,  while  the  dust  is 
shaken  from  the   eight   stout  octavos   that 
contain  his  works  only  by  the  professional 
man  of  letters. 

What  first  strikes  the  student  of  Landor 


66  LANBOR. 

is  the  lack  of  any  development  in  his  genius. 
This  is  one  reason  why  Mr.  Leslie  Stephen, 
seizing  on  the  characteristic  somewhat  rude- 
ly, and  leaping  to  an  ungracious  conclusion, 
calls  him  "  a  glorified  and  sublime  edition 
of  the  sixth-form  schoolboy."  Men  whose 
genius  is  of  this  fixed  type  are  rare  in  Eng- 
lish literature,  and  not  of  the  highest  rank. 
They  exhibit  no  radical  change  ;  they  are  at 
the  beginning  what  they  are  at  the  end ; 
their  works  do  not  belong  to  any  particular 
period  of  their  lives  ;  they  seem  free  from 
their  age,  and  to  live  outside  of  it.  Hence, 
in  dealing  with  them,  historical  criticism  — 
the  criticism  whose  purpose  is  to  explain 
rather  than  to  judge  —  soon  finds  itself  at 
fault.  When  the  circumstances  that  deter- 
mined the  original  bent  of  their  minds  have 
been  set  forth,  there  is  nothing  more  to  be 
said.  With  Landor,  this  bent  seems  to  have 
been  given  by  his  classical  training.  To 
write  Latin  verses  was  the  earliest  serious 
employment  of  his  genius,  and  his  efforts 
were  immediately  crowned  with  success. 
These  studies,  falling  in  with  natural  in- 
clinations and  aptitudes,  pledged  him  to  a 
classical  manner  ;  they  made  real  for  him 
the  myths  and  history  of  Greece  and  Rome ; 


LAN  DOR.  67 

they  fed  his  devotion  to  the  ancient  virtues, 
—  love  of  freedom,  aspiration  for  the  cahn 
of  wisdom,  reverence  for  the  dignity  of  he- 
roism, delight  in  beauty  for  its  own  sake; 
they  supported  him  in  what  was  more  distinc- 
tively his  own,  —  his  refinement  in  material 
tastes,  his  burning  indignation,  his  defense 
of  tyrannicide.  These  characteristics  he  had 
in  youth ;  they  were  neither  diminished  nor 
increased  in  age.  In  youth,  too,  he  displayed 
all  his  literary  excellences  and  defects :  the 
fullness  and  weight  of  line ;  the  march  of 
sentences  ;  the  obscurity  arising  from  over- 
condensation  of  thought  and  abrupt  and  el- 
liptical constructions ;  his  command  of  the 
grand  and  impressive  as  well  as  the  beauti- 
ful and  charming  in  imagery ;  his  fondness 
for  heroic  situation  and  for  the  loveliness  of 
minute  objects.  This  was  a  high  endow- 
ment ;  why,  then,  do  its  literary  results  seem 
inadequate  ? 

With  all  his  gifts,  Landor  did  not  possess 
unifying  power.  He  observed  objects  as 
they  passed  before  him  at  hap-hazard,  took 
them  into  his  mind,  and  gave  them  back,  un- 
transformed,  in  their  oiiginal  disorder.  He 
thought  disconnectedly,  and  expressed  his 
thoughts  as  they  came,  detached  and   sepa- 


68  LANDOn. 

rate.     This  lack  of  unity  did  not  result  sim- 
ply from  his  choice  of  the  classical  mode  of 
treatment,  or  from  a  defect  in  logical  or  con- 
structive power,  although  it  was  connected 
with  these.     The  ability  to  fuse  experience, 
to  combine  its  elements  and  make  them  one, 
to  give  it  back  to  the  world,  transformed, 
and  yet  essentially  true,  the  real  creative 
faculty,  is  proportioned  very  strictly  to  the 
self-assertive  power  of  genius,  to  the  energy 
of  the  reaction  of  the  mind  on  nature  and 
life ;  it  springs  from  a  strong  personality. 
To  say  that  Landor's  personality  was  weak 
would  be  to  stidtify  one's  self ;  but  yet  the 
diiference   between    Landor   the   man   and 
Landor  the  author  is  so  great  as  to  make  the 
two  almost  antithetical ;  and  in  his  imagina- 
tive work,  by  which  he  must  be  judged,  it  is 
not  too  much  to  say  that  he  denied  and  for- 
swore his  personality,  and  obliterated  him- 
self so  far  as  was  possible.     He  not  only 
eliminated  self  from  his  style,  and,  after  the 
classical  manner,  defined  by  Arnold,  "  relied 
solely  on  the  weight  and  force  of  that  which, 
with  entire  fidelity,  he  uttered,"  but  he  also 
eliminated  self,  so  far  as  one  can,  from  his 
subject.     Pie  did  not  bind  his  work  together 
by  the  laws  of  his  own  mind  ;  he  did  not 


LANDOR.  69 

root  It  in  the  truth,  as  he  saw  truth  ;  he  did 
not  interpenetrate  and  permeate  it  with  his 
own  beliefs,  as  the  great  masters  have  al- 
ways done.  His  principles  were  at  the  best 
vague,  hardly  amounting  to  more  than  an 
unapplied  enthusiasm  for  liberty,  heroism, 
and  the  other  great  watchwords  of  social 
rather  than  individual  life.  These  illumi- 
nate his  work,  but  they  do  not  give  it  consis- 
tency. It  is  crystalline  in  structure,  beau- 
tiful, ordered,  perfect  in  form  when  taken 
part  by  part,  but  conglomerate  as  a  whole  ; 
it  is  a  handful  of  jewels,  many  of  which  are 
singly  of  the  most  transparent  and  glowing 
light,  but  unrelated  one  to  another,  —  placed 
in  juxtaposition,  but  not  set ;  and  in  the  crys- 
talline mass  is  imbedded  grosser  matter, 
and  mingled  with  the  jewels  are  stones  of 
dull  color  and  light  weight.  A  lovely  object 
caught  his  eye,  and  he  set  it  forth  in  verse  ; 
a  fine  thought  came  to  him,  and  he  inserted 
it  in  his  dialogues ;  but  his  days  were  not 
"  bound  each  to  each  by  natural  piety,"  or 
by  any  other  of  the  shaping  principles  of 
high  genius.  He  was  a  spectator  of  life,  not 
an  actor  in  life.  Nature  was  to  him  a  pano- 
rama, wonderful,  awful,  beautiful,  and  he 
described  its  scenes  down  to  its  most  minute 


70  LANDOR. 

and  evanescent  details.  History  was  his 
theatre,  where  the  personages  played  great 
parts ;  and  he  recorded  their  words  and 
gestures,  always  helping  them  with,  the  de- 
vice of  the  high  buskin  and  something  of  a 
histrionic  air.  He  was  content  to  be  thus 
guided  from  without ;  to  have  his  intellec- 
tual activity  determined  by  the  chance  of 
sensation  and  of  reading,  rather  than  by  a 
well-thought-out  and  enthusiastic  purpose  of 
his  own  soul.  And  so  he  became  hardly 
more  than  a  mirror  of  beauty  and  an  ^olian 
harp  of  thought ;  if  the  vision  came,  if  the 
wind  breathed,  he  responded. 

This  self-effacement,  this  impersonality, 
as  it  is  called,  in  literature,  is  much  praised. 
It  is  said  to  be  classical,  and  there  is  an  im- 
pression in  some  minds  that  such  an  ab- 
dication of  the  individual's  prerogatives  is 
the  distinctive  mark  of  classicism.  There 
is  no  more  misleading  and  confusing  error 
in  criticism.  Not  impersonality,  but  univer- 
sality, is  that  mark  ;  and  this  is  by  no  means 
the  same  thing,  differently  stated.  In  any 
age,  the  first,  although  not  the  sole,  charac- 
tei'istic  of  classical  work  is  that  it  deals  with 
universal  truth,  of  interest  to  aU  men :  and 
hence  the  poet  is  required  to  keep  to  him- 


LANDOR.  71 

self  his  idiosyncrasies,  hobbies,  all  that  is 
simply  his  own  ;  all  that  is  not  identical  with 
the  common  human  nature  ;  all  that  men  in 
large  bodies  cannot  sympathize  with,  under- 
stand, and  appreciate.     Under  these  condi- 
tions  direct   self -revelation   is  exceptional. 
The  poet  usually  expresses  himself  by  so  ar- 
ranging his  plot  and  developing  his  charac- 
ters that  they  will  illustrate  the  laws  of  life, 
as  he  sees  these   laws,  without  any   direct 
statement,  —  though  the  Greek  chorus  is  full 
of  didactic  sayings  ;  and  he  may  also  express 
himself  by  such  a  powerful  presentation  of 
the  morality   intrinsic   in    beautiful   things 
and  noble  actions  as  "  to    soothe  the  cares 
and  lift  the  thoughts  of  men,"  without  any 
dogmatic  insistence  in  his  own  person.     In 
these    ways   uEschylus    obliterated    himself 
from  his  work  just  as  much  as  Shakespeare, 
and  no  more ;  Swift  just  as  much  as  Aristoph- 
anes, and  no  more ;  but  the  statement  that 
Shakespeare  or  Swift  obliterated  themselves 
from  their  works  needs  only  to  be  made  to 
be  laughed  at.     The  faith  of  ^schylus,  the 
wisdom  of  Sophocles,  are  in  all  their  dramas ; 
Anacreon  is  in  all  his  songs,  Horace  in  all 
his  odes.     The  lasting  significance  of  their 
productions  to  mankind  is  derived  from  the 


72  LANBOB. 

clearness,  the  power,  the  skill,  with  which 
they  informed  their  works  with  their  per- 
sonality. These  men  had  a  philosophy  of 
life,  that  underlay  and  unified  their  work. 
They  rebuilt  the  world  in  their  imagination, 
and  oave  it  the  laws  of  their  own  minds. 
Their  spirits  were  active,  moulding,  shaping, 
creating,  subduing  the  whole  of  nature  and 
life  to  themselves.  It  is  true  that  the  an- 
cients accomplished  their  purpose  rather  by 
thought,  the  moderns  rather  by  emotion; 
but  this  difference  is  incidental  to  the  change 
in  civilization.  Either  instrument  is  suffi- 
cient for  its  end ;  but  he  who  would  now 
choose  the  ancient  instead  of  the  modern 
mode,  narrows,  postpones,  and  abbreviates 
his  fame  only  less  than  Landor,  in  his  youth, 
by  writing  in  Latin.  Whatever  be  the 
mode  of  its  operation,  the  energy  of  person- 
ality is  the  very  essence  of  effective  genius. 

That  Landor  had  no  philosophy  of  life,  in 
the  same  sense  as  Shakespeare  or  -3i^schylus, 
is  plain  to  any  reader.  Those  who  look  on 
art,  including  poetry,  as  removed  from  ordi- 
nary human  life,  who  think  that  its  chief 
service  to  men  lies  in  affording  delight  rather 
than  in  that  quickening  of  the  spirit  of 
which  delight  is  only  the  sign  and  efflores- 


LANBOR.  73 

cence,  would  consider  Landor's  lack  o£  this 
philosophy  a  virtue.  It  accounts  largely  for 
his  failure  to  interest  even  the  best  in  the 
larger  part  of  his  work,  and  especially  for 
the  discontinuity  of  his  reflections.  These 
reflections  are  always  his  own  ;  and  this  fact 
may  seem  to  make  against  the  view  that  he 
eliminated  self  from  his  productions  so  far 
as  possible.  But  the  presence  of  personality 
in  literature  as  a  force,  ordering  a  great 
whole  and  giving  it  laws,  is  a  very  different 
thing  from  its  presence  as  a  mere  mouth- 
piece of  opinion.  The  thoughts  may  be  nu- 
merous, varied,  wise,  noble ;  they  may  have 
all  the  virtues  of  truth  and  grace ;  but  if 
they  are  disparate  and  scattered,  if  they 
tend  nowhither,  if  they  leave  the  reader 
where  they  found  him,  if  they  subserve  no 
ulterior  purpose  and  accomplish  no  end, 
there  is  a  wide  gulf  between  them  and  the 
thoughts  of  Shakespeare  and  -^schylus,  no 
less  their  own  than  were  Landor's  his.  In 
the  former,  personality  is  a  power ;  in  the 
latter,  it  is  only  a  voice.  In  Landor's  eight 
volumes  there  are  more  fine  thoughts,  more 
wise  apothegms,  than  in  any  other  discursive 
author's  works  in  English  literature;  but 
they  do  not  teU  on  the  mind.     They  bloom 


74  LAN  DOR. 

like  flowers  In  their  gardens,  but  they  crown 
no  achievement.  At  the  end,  no  cause  is 
advanced,  no  goal  is  won.  This  incoherence 
and  inefficiency  proceed  from  the  absence  of 
any  definite  scheme  of  life,  any  compacted 
system  of  thought,  any  central  princijjles, 
any  strong,  pervading,  and  ordering  person- 
ality. 

In  the  same  way  the  objectivity  of  Lan- 
dor's  work,  its  naturalism  as  distinguished 
from  imaginativeness,  results  from  the  same 
cause,  but  with  the  difference  that,  while 
the  faults  already  mentioned  are  largely  due 
to  an  imperfect  equipment  of  the  mind,  his 
mode  of  art  seems  to  have  been  adopted  by 
conscious  choice  and  of  set  purpose.  The 
opinion  of  those  who  look  on  naturalism  as 
a  virtue  in  art  is  deserving  of  respect.  We 
have  been  admonished  for  a  long  while  that 
men  should  see  things  as  they  are,  and  pre- 
sent them  as  they  are,  and  that  this  wks  the 
Greek  way.  The  dictum,  when  applied 
with  the  meaning  that  men  should  be  free 
from  prejudice  and  impartial  in  judgment, 
no  one  would  contest ;  but  when  it  is  pro- 
claimed with  the  meaning  that  poets  should 
express  ideas  nakedly,  and  should  reproduce 
objects  by  portraiture,  there   is  excuse  for 


LANDOR.  15 

raising  some  question.  No  doubt,  this  was 
in  general  the  practice  of  the  ancients.  The 
Athenians  were  primarily  intellectual,  the 
Romans  unimaginative.  But  by  the  opera- 
tion of  various  causes  —  the  chief  of  which 
are  the  importance  bestowed  on  the  individ- 
ual and  the  impulse  given  to  emotion  by  the 
Christian  religion  —  mankind  has  changed 
somewhat ;  and  therefore  the  methods  of 
appeal  to  men,  the  ways  of  touching  their 
hearts  and  enlightening  their  minds,  have 
been  modified.  In  literature  this  change  is 
expressed  by  saying  that  the  romantic  man- 
ner has,  in  general,  superseded  the  classical. 
The  romantic  manner  aims  at  truth  no  less 
than  the  classical ;  it  sets  forth  things  as 
tliey  are  no  less  completely  and  clearly. 
The  difference  is  rather  one  of  methods  than 
of  aims.  The  classical  poet  usually  per- 
ceives the  object  by  his  intellect,  and  makes 
his  appeal  to  the  mind  ;  the  romantic  poet 
seizes  on  the  object  with  his  imagination, 
and  makes  his  appeal  to  the  heart.  Not 
that  classical  work  is  without  imagination, 
or  romantic  work  devoid  of  intellectuality  ; 
but  that  in  one  the  intellect  counts  for  more, 
in  the  other  imagination.  The  classical  poet, 
having  once   presented   ideas   and   objects, 


76  LANDOB. 

leaves  them  to  make  their  way ;  the  romantic 
poet  not  only  presents  them,  but,  by  awaken- 
ing the  feelings,  predisposes  the  mood  of  the 
mind,  makes  their  reception  by  the  mind 
easier,  wins  their  way  for  them.  In  clas- 
sical work,  consequently,  success  depends 
mainly  on  lucidity  of  understanding,  clear- 
ness of  vision,  skill  in  verbal  expression  ;  in 
romantic  work,  the  poet  must  not  only  pos- 
sess these  qualities,  but  must  superadd,  as 
his  prime  characteristic,  rightness,  one  might 
better  say  sanity,  of  passion.  The  classical 
virtues  are  more  common  among  authors, 
the  romantic  far  more  rare ;  and  hence  er- 
ror in  the  romantic  manner  is  more  frequent, 
especially  in  dealing  with  ideas.  But  with 
all  its  liability  to  mistake  in  weak  hands, 
romantic  art,  by  its  higher  range,  its  fiercer 
intensity,  especially  by  its  greater  certainty, 
has,  in  the  hands  of  a  master,  a  clear  in- 
crease of  power  over  classical  art,  and  under 
the  changed  conditions  of  civilization  its  re- 
sources are  not  to  be  lightly  neglected.  In- 
deed, one  who  voluntarily  adopts  the  clas- 
sical manner  as  an  exclusive  mode  seems  to 
choose  an  instrument  of  less  compass  and 
melody,  to  prefer  Greek  to  modern  music. 
He  sings  to  a  secluded  and  narrow  circle, 


LANDOB.  77 

and  loses  the  ear  of  the  world.  Certainly 
Landor  made  this  choice,  and  by  it  he  must 
stand. 

Let  us  take  an  example  from  the  best  of 
Landor's  work,  and  from  that  region  of  clas- 
sical art  where  it  is  wholly  competent,  —  the 
brief  description  of  small  objects  :  — 

"  The  ever-sacred  cup 
Of  the  pure  lily  hath  between  my  hands 
Felt  safe,  unsoiled,  nor  lost  one  grain  of  gold." 

How  completely,  how  distinctly,  the  image 
is  given,  —  its  form,  its  transparent  purit}^ 
its  fragile  and  trembling  gold !  How  free 
from  any  other  than  a  strictly  artistic  charm  ! 
And  yet  how  different  is  its  method  of  ap- 
peal from  Shelley's 

"  tender  blue-bells,  at  whose  birth 
The  sod  scarce  heaved ; " 

from  Shakespeare's 

"  daffodils 
That  come  before  the  swallow  dares,  and  take 
The  winds  of  March  with  beauty." 

Or,  to  select  an  illustration,  also  of  Landor's 
best,  when  the  image,  no  less  objective, 
yields  of  itself  an  infinite  suggestion  :  — 

"Borgia,  thou  once  wert  almost  too  august 
And  high  for  adoration ;  now  thou  'rt  dust. 
All  that  remains  of  thee  these  plaits  unfold, 
Calm  hair  meandering  in  pellucid  gold." 


78  LAN  DOR. 

Again,  how  perfect  is  the  image,  how  effec- 
tive the  development  of  the  third  line  ;  how 
the  melody  of  the  last  blends  with  its  se- 
lected epithets  to  place  the  object  entire  and 
whole  before  the  mind  ;  how  free  is  the  qua- 
train from  any  self  -  intrusion  of  the  poet! 
But  here,  too,  the  method  of  appeal  is  very 
different  from  Shakespeare's,  as  in  the  lines 
on  Yorick's  skull :  "  Here  hung  those  lips 
that  I  have  kissed  I  know  not  how  oft." 
The  difference  in  mood  between  these  two 
only  emphasizes  the  difference  in  method. 
Enough  has  been  said,  however,  in  descrip- 
tion and  exemplification  of  the  two  kinds  of 
art.  Either  is  sufficient  for  its  ends,  nor 
would  any  one  desire  to  dispense  with  that 
which  has  resulted  in  work  so  admirable  as 
has  been  quoted  from  Landor.  The  distinc- 
tively romantic  poets  do  not  consign  the  clas- 
sical style  to  disuse.  In  the  presentation  of 
images,  Keats  has  frequent  recourse  to'it,  as 
in  his  picture  of  Autumn  lying 

"  on  a  half -reaped  furrow  sound  asleep, 
Drowsed  with  the  fume  of  poppies,  while  thy  hook 
Spares  the  next  swath  and  all  its  twined  flowers." 

So  Wordsworth,  in  expressing  ideas,  is 
sometimes  more  bald  than  the  least  imagina- 
tive of  the  classics.     But  such  poets  do  not 


LANBOR.  79 

employ  this  style  alone  ;  they  are  character- 
ized by  the  modern  manner  ;  they  give  us 
those  "  sweet  views  "  which  in  the  ancient 
mode  "  can  never  well  be  seen."  Landor 
droops  below  his  great  contemporaries,  not 
by  merely  adopting  the  classical  method, 
but  by  adopting  it  exclusively.  Whether 
this  choice  was  entirely  fi-ee,  or  partly  de- 
termined by  natural  incapacity,  is  doubtful. 
Violent  and  tempestuous  as  his  nature  was, 
with  all  his  boyish  intensity  of  indignation, 
his  boyish  delicacy  of  tenderness,  he  seems 
to  possess  temper  rather  than  true  passion. 
In  the  verses  to  his  poetic  love,  lanthe,  there 
are  many  fine  sentiments,  graceful  turns ; 
thei'e  is  courtliness  of  behavior;  but  the 
note  of  passion  is  not  struck.  lanthe  is 
only  another  poetic  mistress  of  the  cavalier 
school,  and  in  the  memory  her  name  is  less, 
both  for  dignity  and  pathos,  than  Rose  Ayl- 
mer's.  Without  passion,  of  course,  a  poet  is 
condemned  to  the  classical  style.  Passion 
is  the  element  in  which  the  romantic  writer 
fuses  beauty  and  wisdom ;  it  is  the  means 
by  which  personality  pervades  literary  work 
with  most  ease,  directness,  and  glow.  In 
the  great  modern  poets  it  is  the  substance  of 
their  genius.     But  just  as  neither  by  a  phi- 


80  LANDOR. 

losophy  of  life  nor  in  any  other  way  did 
Landor  fill  his  subject  with  himself,  so  nei- 
ther by  passion  nor  by  any  other  quality  did 
he  breathe  his  own  spirit  into  his  style. 

The  consequence  is  that  Landor,  unclas- 
sified in  his  own  age,  is  now  to  be  ranked 
among  the  poets,  increasing  in  number,  who 
appeal  rather  to   the    artistic    than  to  the 
poetic  sense.     He  is  to  be  placed  in  that 
group  which  looks  on  art   as  a  world   re- 
moved ;   which  prizes  it  mainly  for  the  de- 
light it  gives  ;  which,  caring  less  for  truth, 
deals  chiefly  with  the  beauty  that  charms 
the  senses  ;  and  which  therefore  weaves    po- 
etry like  tapestry,  and  uses  the  web  of  speech 
to  bring  out  a  succession  of  fine  pictures. 
The  watchwords  of  any  school,  whether  in 
thought  or  art,  seldom  awake  hostility  until 
their  bearing  on  the  details  of  practice  re- 
veals their  meaning.     Art  is,  in  a  sense,  a 
world  removed  from  the  actual  and  present 
life,  and  beauty  is  the  sole  title  that  admits 
any  work  within  its  limits.     Of  this  there  is 
no  question.     But  that  world,  however  far 
from  what  is  peculiar  to  any  one  age,  has  its 
eternal    foundations  in  universal    life ;  and 
that  beauty  has  its  enduring  power  because 
it  is  the  incarnation  of  universal  life.    What 


LAN  DOB.  81 

poem  has  a  better  right  to  admission  there 
than  The  Eve  of  .St.  Agnes?  and  in  what 
poem  does  the  heart  of  life  beat  more 
warmly?  Laodamia  belongs  in  that  world, 
but  it  is  because  it  voices  abiding  human 
feelings  no  less  than  because  of  its  serenity. 
Nature  in  itself  is  savage,  sterile,  and.  void ; 
individual  life  in  itself  is  trifling:  each  ob- 
tains its  value  through  its  interest  to  human- 
ity as  a  whole,  and  the  office  of  art  is  to  set 
forth  that  value.  A  lovely  object,  a  noble 
action,  are  each  of  worth  to  men,  but  the 
latter  is  of  the  more  worth ;  and,  as  was 
long  ago  pointed  out,  poetry  is  by  the  limit- 
ations of  language  at  a  considerable  disad- 
vantage in  treating  of  formal  beauty.  But 
without  developing  these  remarks,  of  which 
there  is  no  need,  the  only  point  here  to  be 
made  is  that  in  so  far  as  poetry  concerns  it- 
self with  objects  without  relation  to  ideas,  it 
loses  influence  ;  in  so  far  as  it  neglects  emo- 
tion and  thought  for  the  purpose  of  gaining 
sensuous  effects  it  loses  worth;  in  both  it 
declines  from  the  higher  to  the  lower  levels. 
Landor,  notwithstanding  his  success  in  pre- 
senting objects  of  artistic  beauty  —  and  his 
poetry  is  full  of  exquisite  delineations  of 
them  —  failed  to  interest  men ;  nor  could  his 


82  LANDOB. 

skill  in  expressing  thought,  although  he  was 
far  more  intellectual  than  his  successors, 
save  his  reputation.  Lanclor  mistook  a  few 
of  the  marks  of  art  for  all.  His  work  has 
the  serenity,  the  remoteness,  that  character- 
ize high  art,  but  it  lacks  an  intimate  rela- 
tion with  the  general  life  of  men;  it  sets 
forth  formal  beauty,  as  painting  does,  but 
that  beauty  remains  a  sensation,  and  does 
not  pass  into  thought.  This  absence  of  any 
vital  relation  between  his  art  and  life,  be- 
tween his  objects  and  ideas,  denotes  his  fail- 
ure. There  are  so  many  poets  whose  works 
contain  as  perfect  beauty,  and  in  addition 
truth  and  passion ;  so  many  who  instead  of 
mirroring  beauty  make  it  the  voice  of  life, 
—  who  instead  of  responding  in  melodious 
thought  to  the  wandering  winds  of  reverie 
strike  their  lyres  in  the  strophe  and  anti- 
strophe  of  continuous  song,  —  that  the  world 
is  content  to  let  Landor  go  by.  The  guests 
at  the  famous  late  dinner-party  to  which  he 
looked  forward  will  indeed  be  very  few,  and 
they  will  be  men  of  leisure. 

Thus  far,  in  examining  the  work  of  Lan- 
dor as  a  whole,  and  endeavoring  to  under- 
stand somewhat  the  public  indifference  to  it, 
the  answer  has  been  found  in  its  objectivity 


LANBOR.  83 

and  its  discontinuity,  both  springing  from 
the  effacement  of  his  personality  as  an  ac- 
tive power  ;  or,  in  other  words,  in  the  fact 
that,  by  failing  to  link  his  images  with  his 
thoughts,  and  his  thoughts  one  with  another, 
so  as  to  make  them  tell  on  the  mind,  and 
especially  by  eliminating  the  romantic  ele- 
ment of  passion,  he  failed  to  bring  his  work 
into  sympathetic  or  helpful  relations  with 
the  general  emotional  and  intellectual  life  of 
men. 

Why,  then,  do  the  most  sensitive  and 
discriminating  critics,  as  was  said  at  the  be- 
ginning, list  themselves  in  Landor's  favor  ? 
They  are,  without  exception,  fellow-workers 
with  him  in  the  craft  of  literature.  They 
have,  by  their  continued  eulogy  of  him, 
made  it  a  sign  of  refinement  to  be  charmed 
by  him,  a  proof  of  unusually  good  taste  to 
praise  him.  His  admirers,  by  their  very  di- 
vergence in  opinion  from  the  crowd,  seem 
to  claim  uncommon  sensibilities ;  and  the  co- 
terie is  certainly  one  of  the  highest  order,  in- 
tellectually:  Browning,  Lowell,  Swinburne, 
to  name  no  more.  They  are  all  literary 
men.  They  are  loud  in  their  plaudits  of  his 
workmanship,  but  are  noticeably  guarded 
in   their   commendation  of  his  entire   con- 


84  LAN  DOE. 

tents  ;  the  passages  for  which  they  express 
unstinted  enthusiasm  are  few.  Landor  was, 
beyond  doubt,  a  master-workman,  and  skill 
in  workmanship  is  dear  to  the  craft ;  others 
may  feel  its  effects,  but  none  appreciate  it 
with  the  keen  relish  of  the  professional  au- 
thor. The  fullness,  power,  and  harmony  of 
Landor's  language  are  clearly  evident  in  his 
earliest  work.  He  had  the  gift  of  literary 
expression  from  his  youth,  and  in  his  mature 
work  it  shows  as  careful  and  high  cultiva- 
tion as  such  a  gift  ever  received  from  its 
possessor.  None  could  give  keener  point 
and  smoother  polish  to  a  short  sentence  ; 
none  could  thread  the  intricacies  of  loner  and 
involved  constructions  more  unerringly.  He 
had  at  command  all  the  grammatical  re- 
sources of  lucidity,  though  he  did  not  alwaj^s 
care  to  employ  them.  He  knew  all  the  de- 
vices of  prose  composition  to  conceal  and  to 
disclose ;  to  bring  the  commonplace  to  issue 
in  the  unexpected ;  to  lead  up,  to  soften,  to 
hesitate,  to  declaim  ;  to  extort  all  the  supple- 
mentary and  new  suggestions  of  an  old  com- 
parison ;  to  frame  a  new  and  perfect  simile  ; 
in  short,  he  was  thoroughly  trained  to  his 
art.  Yet  his  prose  is  not,  by  present  canons, 
perfect  prose.     It  is  not  self-possessed,  sub- 


LANBOB.  85 

dued,  and  graceful  conversation,  modulated, 
making  its  points  without  aggressive  insist- 
ence, yet  with  certainty,  keeping  interest 
alive  hy  a  brilliant  but  natural  turn  and  by 
the  brief  and  luminous  flash  of  truth  through 
a  perfect  phrase.  His  prose  is  rather  the 
monologue  of  a  seer.  In  reading  his  works 
one  feels  somewhat  as  if  sitting  at  the  feet 
of  Coleridge.  Landor  has  the  presence  that 
abashes  companions.  His  manner  of  speech 
is  more  dignified,  more  ceremonial,  his  enun- 
ciation is  more  resonant,  his  accent  more  ex- 
quisite, than  belong  to  the  man  of  the  world. 
He  silences  his  readers  by  the  mere  impos- 
sibility of  interrupting  with  a  question  so 
noble  and  smooth-sliding  a  current  of  words. 
The  style  is  a  sort  of  modern  Miltonic ;  it 
has  the  suggestion  of  the  pulpit  divine  in 
Hooker,  the  touch  of  formal  artificiality  that 
characterizes  the  first  good  English  prose. 
Landor  goes  far  afield  for  his  vocables ;  his 
page  is  a  trifle  too  polysyllabic,  has  too 
much  of  the  surface  glitter  of  Latinity.  But 
in  the  age  that  produced  the  styles  of  De 
Quincey,  Ruskin,  and  Carlyle,  it  would  be 
mere  folly  to  find  fault  because  Landor  did 
not  write,  we  will  not  say  after  the  French 
fashion,  but  after  the  fashion  of  Swift,  at 


86  LANBOR. 

his  higliest  and  on  his  level,  the  unrivaled 
master  of  simjjle  English  prose.  Landor,  at 
his  best,  is  not  so  picturesque  as  De  Quin- 
cey,  nor  so  eloquent  as  Ruskin,  nor  so  in- 
tense as  Carlyle ;  but  he  has  more  self-pos- 
session, more  serenity,  more  artistic  charm, 
a  wider  compass,  a  more  equal  harmony, 
than  any  of  these. 

Landor  pleases  his  fellow-craftsmen,  how- 
ever, not  only  by  this  general  command  of 
language  as  a  means  of  expression,  but  by 
the  perfection  of  form  in  his  short  pieces. 
Perfection  of  form  is  the  great  feature  of 
classical  art ;  it  is  an  intellectual  virtue,  at 
least  in  literature,  and  appeals  to  the  mind. 
The  moderns  are  lacking  in  it.  Landor's 
command  of  form  was  limited,  insufficient 
for  the  construction  of  a  drama  ;  impressive 
as  Count  Julian  is,  it  has  not  this  final  ex- 
cellence. Landor's  power  in  this  respect  is 
analogous  to  Herrick's  ;  it  is  perfect '  only 
within  narrow  bounds ;  but  it  lacks  Her- 
rick's spontaneity.  His  verses  are  not  the 
"  swallow  flights  of  song  ; "  he  was  not  a 
singer.  The  lyric  on  Rose  Aylmer  is  en- 
tirely exceptional,  and  much  of  its  charm  lies 
in  the  beauty  of  the  name,  the  skillful  repe- 
tition, and,  we  must  add,  in  the  memory  of 


LANDOR.  87 

Lamb's  fondness  for  it.    Familiar  as  it  is,  it 
would  be  unjust  not  to  quote  it  :  — 

"  Ah,  what  avails  the  sceptred  race  ! 

Ah,  what  the  form  divine ! 
What  every  vu'tue,  every  grace ! 

Kose  Aylmer,  all  were  thine. 
Rose  Aylmer,  whom  these  wakeful  eyes 

May  weep,  but  never  see, 
A  night  of  memories  and  of  sighs 

I  consecrate  to  thee." 

Ordinarily,  however,  Landor  deals  with  a 
beautiful  image  or  one  fine  sentiment.  His 
objectivity,  his  discontinuity,  help  him  here ; 
they  insure  that  simplicity  and  singleness 
which  are  necessary  for  success.  The  lack 
of  any  temptation  in  his  mind  to  expound 
and  suggest  is  probably  one  reason  why  he 
rejected  the  sonnet,  certainly  the  most  beau- 
tiful poetic  mould  to  give  shape  to  such  de- 
tached thoughts  and  feelings.  He  scorned 
the  sonnet ;  it  was  too  long  for  him  ;  he 
must  be  even  more  brief.  He  would  present 
the  object  at  once,  instead  of  gradually,  as 
the  sonnet  does ;  not  unveiling  the  perfect 
and  naked  image  until  the  last  word  has 
trembled  away.  His  best  work  of  this  kind 
is  in  the  quatx-ain,  which  is  rather  the  moral- 
ist's than  the  poet's  form,  —  Martial's,  not 
Horace's. 


88  LANDOB. 

"  I  strove  with  none,  for  none  was  worth  my  strife. 
Nature  I  loved,  and,  next  to  Nature,  Art ; 
I  warmed  both  hands  before  the  fire  of  life, 
It  sinks,  and  I  am  ready  to  depart." 

This  is  perfect ;  but  it  is  perfect  speech,  not 
perfect  song.  When  Landor  had  something 
to  say  at  more  length,  when  he  had  a  story 
to  tell,  he  chose  the  idyl ;  and  his  work  in 
this  kind  is  no  less  perfect  in  form  than  are 
his  quatrains.  Indeed,  on  the  idyls  his 
poetic  fame  will  mainly  rest.  They  are  very 
remote  from  modern  life,  but  the  best  of 
them  are  very  beautiful,  and  in  the  highest 
rank  of  poetry  that  appeals  to  the  artistic 
sense.  Those  who  are  able  still  to  hold  fast 
to  the  truth  of  Greek  mythology  to  the  im- 
agination will  not  willingly  let  them  die.  To 
read  them  is  like  looking  at  the  youths  and 
maidens  of  an  ancient  bas-relief.  The  cul- 
tivated will  never  tire  of  them  ;  the  peo^Dle 
will  never  care  for  them.  The  limitations 
of  their  interest  ai'e  inherent  in  their  sub- 
ject and  the  mode  of  its  presentation  ;  but 
these  limitations  do  not  lessen  their  beauty, 
although  tliey  make  very  small  the  number 
who  appreciate  it. 

Landor's  influence  over  his  critics  is  due 
chiefly  to  his  power  as  a  stylist,  and  to  the 


LANDOR.  89 

perfection  of  form  In  his  shorter  poems  and 
his  idyls ;  but  something  is  also  due  to  the 
passages  which,  apart  from  those  mentioned, 
they  commend  so  unreservedly ;  such  as  the 
study  of  incipent  insanity  in  the  dialogue  be- 
tween Tiberius  and  Vipsania,  and  the  scenes 
from  Antony  and  Octavius  where  the  boy 
Caesarion  is  an  actor.  Not  to  be  conquered 
by  these  argues  one's  self  "  dull  of  soul ;  " 
and  scattered  through  the  volumes  are  other 
passages  of  only  less  mastery,  especially  in 
the  Greek  dialogues,  which  cannot  here  be 
particularized.  For  this  reason  no  author  is 
more  served  than  Landor  by  a  book  of  se- 
lections. After  all,  too,  an  author  should  be 
judged  by  his  best.  Nevertheless,  when  one 
remembers  the  extraordinary  gifts  of  Lan- 
dor, one  cannot  but  regret  the  defects  of 
nature  and  judgment  that  have  so  seriously 
interfered  with  his  influence.  His  work  as 
a  whole  exhibits  a  sadder  waste  of  genius 
than  is  the  case  even  with  Coleridge.  There 
is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  the  verdict  of 
the  public  on  his  value  will  be  reversed.  His 
failure  may  well  serve  as  a  warning  to  the 
artistic  school  in  poetry ;  it  affords  one  more 
of  the  long  list  of  illustrations  of  that  funda- 
mental truth  in  literature, —  the  truth  that  a 


90 


LANDOE. 


man's  work  is  of  service  to  mankind  in  pro- 
portion as,  by  expressing  himself  in  it,  by 
filling  it  with  his  own  personality,  he  fills  it 
with  human  interest. 


i 


I 


CEABBE. 

We  have  done  with  Crabbe.  His  tales 
have  failed  to  interest  us.  Burke  and  his 
friends,  as  we  all  know,  held  a  different 
opinion  from  ours  ;  and  their  praise  is  not 
likely  to  have  been  ill  founded.  The  culti- 
vated taste  of  Holland  House,  thirty  years 
later,  is  also  against  our  decision.  Through 
two  generations  of  markedly  different  liter- 
ary temper  Crabbe  pleased  the  men  best 
worth  pleasing.  Indeed,  we  owe  him  to 
Burke's  approval ;  for  when  Lord  North, 
Lord  Shelburne,  and  Lord  Thurlow  had 
neglected  his  entreaties  for  recognition  and 
aid,  and  had  left  him  to  write,  pawn,  and 
go  hungry,  Burke  saved  him  from  the  debt- 
or's prison,  took  him  into  his  friendship, 
welcomed  him  to  his  home,  and  gave  him  to 
literature. 

Yet  the  verses  which  won  this  recognition 
from  Burke,  and  gained  for  Crabbe,  besides, 
praise  from  Johnson  and  talk  with  Fox  and 
idle   mornings   in   Reynolds's   studio,  were 

91 


92  CRABBE. 

only  his  fledgeling  flights.  It  was  not  until 
after  more  than  twenty  years  of  silence, 
spent  in  the  obscurity  of  a  country  clergy- 
man's life,  that  he  showed  the  richness  and 
abundance  of  his  vein.  Then  Burke  and  his 
friends  had  given  place  to  those  younger 
men,  in  whose  lives  a  new  age  was  dawn- 
ing ;  but  as  warm  a  welcome  awaited  Crabbe 
among  them  as'  he  had  ever  met  with  in 
Burke's  club.  With  them  he  passed  his  old 
age,  pleased  with  Byron's  praise,  and  with 
the  friendliness  of  Moore  and  Rogers,  and 
with  Scott's  kindly  regard  and  correspon- 
dence. They  liked  to  see  him,  with  his  beau- 
tiful white  hair,  his  formal,  old-fashioned 
garb  and  old-school  manners,  the  last  of  that 
long  line  of  poets  through  whom  the  Queen 
Anne  taste  had  tyrannized  for  a  century  in 
English  verse,  sitting  familiarly  among  them- 
selves, who  were  preparing  the  way  for  the 
next  generation  to  ignore  the  traditions 
which  Burke  and  Johnson  had  fixed  in  his 
poetic  faith.  Especially  did  Sir  Walter 
honor  him ;  like  Fox,  he  chose  Crabbe's 
poems  to  be  read  to  him  just  before  he  died. 
Without  reckoning  the  approval  of  others, 
what  was  the  strong  attraction  in  Crabbe's 
work  for  Scott  and  Fox  ?     Their  judgment 


CRABBE.  93 

was  not  so  worthless  that  it  can  be  disre- 
garded with  the  complacent  assurance  with 
which  the  decisions  of  Gifford  and  Jeffrey 
are  set  aside  ;  on  the  contrary,  Scott  had 
such  health  and  Fox  such  refinement  that 
their  judgment  ought  to  raise  a  doubt  whe- 
ther our  generation  is  not  making  a  mistake 
and  missing  pleasure  through  its  neglect  of 
Crabbe. 

Crabbe  is  a  story-teller.  He  describes  the 
life  he  saw,  —  common,  homely  life,  some- 
times wretched,  not  infrequently  criminal ; 
the  life  of  the  country  poor,  with  occasional 
light  and  shadow  from  the  life  of  the  gen- 
tlefolk above  them.  He  had  been  born  into 
it,  in  a  village  on  the  Suffolk  coast,  amid 
stern  and  cheerless  natural  scenes :  land- 
ward, the  bramble-overgrown  heath  encom- 
passing crowded  and  mean  houses;  east- 
ward, — 

"  Stakes  and  sea-weed  withering-  on  the  mud." 
Here  he  had  passed  his  boyhood,  in  the 
midst  of  human  life  equally  barren  and 
stricken  with  the  ugliness  of  poverty,  among 
surly  and  sordid  fishers  given  to  hard  labor 
and  rough  brawl,  — 

"  A  joyless,  wild,  amphibious  race, 
With  sullen  woe  displayed  in  every  face,"  — 


94  CEABBE. 

and  the  sight  had  been  a  burden  to  him. 
The  desire  to  throw  off  this  twofold  oppres- 
sion of  mean  nature  and  humanity  must 
have  counted  for  much  in  determining  him 
on  that  long  -  remembered  December  day, 
when,  as  the  bleak  twilight  came  down, 
darkening  the  marshy  pool  on  the  heath 
where  he  stood,  he  took  his  resolve  to  go  up 
to  London  and  seek  poetical  fame ;  and  glad 
at  heart  he  must  have  been,  that  morning  of 
early  spring,  when  he  left  all  this  ugliness 
behind  him,  ignorant  of  the  struggle  and  dis- 
tress he  was  to  meet  where  he  was  going. 

In  that  early  poem  which  Johnson  praised 
Crabbe  described  this  village  life  with  the 
vigor  of  a  youth  who  had  escaped  out  of  its 
dreary  imprisonment,  and  without  a  touch  of 
that  tenderness  for  early  associations  which 
softened  Goldsmith's  retrospect  of  the  scenes 
of  his  early  days.  Crabbe  told  of  exhaust- 
ing labor  leading  on  to  prematurely  useless 
and  neglected  age ;  of  storms  sweeping  away 
the  shelter  of  the  poor ;  of  smugglers,  poach- 
ers, wreckers,  tavern  debauchery,  and,  worst 
of  all,  the  poor-house  —  a  terrible  picture, 
perhaps  the  best  known  of  all  his  drawing 
—  with  its  deserted  inmates  cut  off  from  all 
human  care  except  that  of  the  heedless  phy- 


CRABBE.  95 

sician  and  the  heartless  parson ;  a  miserable 
tale,  but  too  much  of  it  only  what  his  own 
eyes  had  seen.  We  do  not  know  the  con- 
tents of  those  piles  of  manuscripts  which  he 
wrote  during  his  twenty  years  of  silence, 
and  —  not  much  to  the  world's  loss,  some 
think  —  made  bonfires  of  to  amuse  his  chil- 
dren ;  but  his  first  poem  after  that  long  in- 
terval was  the  same  story,  the  experience  of 
those  whose  names  appeared  in  the  year's 
parish  register  of  births,  marriages,  and 
deaths,  and  was  a  sorrowful  survey  of  seduc- 
tion, desertion,  crime,  discontent,  and  folly. 
In  his  later  tales  he  dealt  less  in  unrelieved 
gloom  and  bitter  misery,  and  at  times  made 
a  trial  at  humor.  There  are  glimpses  of  plea- 
sant English  life  and  character,  but  these 
are  only  glimpses;  the  ground  of  his  painting 
is  shadow,  —  the  shadow  that  rested  on  the 
life  of  the  English  poor  in  his  generation. 

Where  else  would  one  turn  for  an  ade- 
quate description  of  that  life,  or  gain  so  di- 
rect an  insight  into  the  social  sources  and 
conditions  of  the  Methodist  revival,  or  into 
the  motives  and  convictions  of  reformers 
like  Mary  WoUstonecraft  ?  Where  would 
one  obtain  so  keen  a  sense  of  the  vast  change 
which  has  taken  place  in  the  conditions  of 


96  CRABBE. 

humble   liuraan   life    within    this    century  ? 
Mr.  Leslie  Stephen,  in  that  essay  which  is 
so  good-humored  but  so  unsuccessful  an  at- 
tempt to  appreciate   Crabbe,   mentions  the 
few  illustrations  in  modern  literature  of  the 
life  Crabbe  described  ;  it  is  seen  in  Char- 
lotte   Bronte's  Yorkshiremen,   and    George 
Eliot's  millers,  and  in  a  few  other  charac- 
ters, "  but,"  he  says,  "  to  get  a  realistic  pic- 
ture of   country  life  as    Crabbe  saw  it,  we 
must  go  back  to  Squire  Western,  or  to  some 
of   the  roughly-hewn  masses  of  flesh  who 
sat  to  Hogarth,"     The  setting  of  Crabbe's 
tales  has  this  special  historic  interest.     The 
schools,  houses,  books,   habits,  occupations, 
and  all  the  external  characteristics  of  the 
tales   belong  to   the  time :   the   press-gang 
comes  to  carry  off  the  lover  just  before  his 
wedding-day,  and  leaves  the  bride  to  nurse 
an  unfathered  child,  to  receive  the  courtship 
of  a  canting  and  carnal  preacher,  and  to  find 
a  refuge  from  him,  and  from  the  father  who 
favors    him,  in   suicide ;    orphan   boys   are 
bound  over  to  brutal  task-masters  ;  pictures 
of  the  sects  (from  the  pen  of  a  respectable 
clergyman  of  the  Established  Church,  it  is 
true)   recall   the   beginnings  of  Methodism 
with  a  vividness  only  to  be  equaled  by  the 


CBABBE.  97 

books  and  pamphlets  of  tlie  early  converts' 
own  writing.  This  historic  value  of  the 
tales,  however,  great  as  it  is  to  the  student 
of  manners,  is  secondary  to  their  poetic 
value,  which  lies  in  the  sentiment,  feeling, 
and  pathos  with  which  the  experience  of  life 
embodied  in  them,  the  workings  of  simple 
human  nature,  in  however  debased  surround- 
ings, is  set  forth.  It  is  an  experience  which 
results  usually  from  the  interplay  of  low  and 
selfish  motives,  and  of  ignoble  or  weak  pas- 
sions ;  it  is,  too  often,  the  course  of  brutal 
appetite,  thoughtless  or  heartless  folly,  ava- 
rice, sensuality,  and  vice,  relieved  too  seldom 
by  amiable  character,  sympathy,  charity, 
self-sacrifice,  or  even  by  the  charm  of  nat- 
ural beauty.  Yet  if  all  the  seventy  tales 
be  taken  into  account,  they  contain  nearly 
all  varieties  of  character  and  circumstance 
among  the  country  poor  ;  and,  though  the 
darker  side  may  seem  to  be  more  frequently 
insisted  upon,  it  is  because  the  nature  of  his 
subject  made  it  necessary,  because  he  let  his 
light,  as  Moore  said,  — 

"  Through  life's  low,  dark  interior  fall, 
Opening  the  whole,  severely  bright," 

rather  than  because  he  had  any  lack  of 
cheerfulness  of  temper. 


98  CRABBE. 

Crabbe  does  not,  in  a  true  sense,  give 
expression  to  tbe  life  of  tbe  poor  ;  be  merely 
narrates  it.  Here  and  tbere,  tbrougbout  tbe 
poems,  are  episodes  written  out  of  bis  own 
life  ;  but  usually  be  is  concerned  witb  tbe 
experience  of  otlier  men,  wbicli  he  bad  ob- 
served, ratber  tban  witb  what  bis  own  beart 
bad  felt.  A  description  of  life  is  of  course 
far  inferior  to  an  utterance  of  it,  such  as 
was  given  to  us  by  Burns,  wbo  dealt  with 
tbe  life  of  tbe  poor  so  much  more  power- 
fully than  Crabbe  ;  and  a  realistic  descrip- 
tion has  less  poetic  value  tban  an  imaginative 
one,  such  as  was  given  to  us  by  Wordsworth 
at  bis  best.  Crabbe's  description  is  perhaps 
the  most  nakedly  realistic  of  any  in  English 
poetry ;  but  it  is  an  uncommonly  good  one. 
Realism  has  a  narrow  compass,  and  Crabbe's 
powers  were  confined  strictly  within  it ;  but 
he  had  the  best  virtues  of  a  realist.  His 
physical  vision  —  his  sight  of  what  presents 
itself  to  tbe  eye  —  was  almost  perfect ;  he 
saw  every  object,  and  saw  it  as  it  was.  Per- 
haps the  minuteness  with  which  he  saw  was 
not  altogether  an  advantage,  for  he  does  not 
seem  to  have  taken  in  the  landscape  as  a 
whole,  but  only  as  a  mosaic  of  separate  ob- 
jects.    He   never   gives   general   effects   of 


CRABBE.  99 

beauty  or  grandeur ;  indeed,  he  seldom  saw 
the  beauty  of  a  single  object ;  he  did  little 
more  than  catalogue  the  things  before  him, 
and  employ  in  writing  poetry  the  same  fac- 
ulty in  the  same  way  as  in  pursuing  his  fa- 
vorite studies  of  botany  and  entomology. 
Yet,  with  these  limitations,  what  realist  in 
painting  could  exceed  in  truthfulness  and 
carefulness  of  detail  this  picture  of  a  fall 
morning  ?  — 

' '  It  was  a  fair  and  mild  autumnal  sky, 

And  earth's  ripe  treasures  met  th'  admiring  eye  ; 
The  -wet  and  heavy  grass  v/here  feet  had  strayed, 
Not  yet  erect,  the  wanderer's  way  betrayed ; 
Showers  of  the  night  had  swelled  the  deep'ning  rill, 
The  morning  breeze  had  urged  the  quick' ning  mill ; 
Long  yellow  leaves,  from  osiers  strewed  around, 
Choked  the  small  stream  and  hushed  the  feeble  sound." 

Or  this  sketch  of  light  in  a  decayed  ware- 
house turned  into  a  tenement  for  the  poor?  — 

' '  That  window  view  !   oiled  paper  and  old  glass 
Stain  the  strong  rays,  which,  though  impeded,  pass. 
And  give  a  dusty  warmth  to  that  huge  room, 
The  conquered  sunshine's  melancholy  gloom  ; 
When  all  those  western  rays,  without  so  bright, 
Within  become  a  ghastly  glimmering  light, 
As  pale  and  faint  upon  the  floor  they  fall, 
Or  feebly  gleam  on  the  opposing  wall." 

Nor  is  this  carefulness  of  detail  a  trick,  such 
as  is  sometimes  employed,  to  give  the  ap- 


100  CBABBE. 

pearance  of  reality  to  unreal  human  life. 
Crabbe's  mental  vision,  his  sight  into  the 
workings  of  the  passions  and  the  feelings, 
although  not  so  perfect  as  his  physical  vis- 
ion, was  yet  at  its  best  very  keen  and  clear ; 
the  sentiments,  moods,  reflections,  and  ac- 
tions of  his  characters  are  seldom  contrary 
to  nature.  It  would  be  difficult  to  show  a 
finer  delineation  of  its  kind  than  his  descrip- 
tion of  the  meeting  of  two  long-parted  broth- 
ers. As  Richard  ajiproaches  his  brother's 
hall,  he  reflects,  — 

"  'How  shall  I  now  my  unknown  way  explore,  — 
He  proud  and  rich,  I  very  proud  and  poor  ? 
Perhaps  my  friend  a  dubious  speech  mistook. 
And  George  may  meet  me  with  a  stranger's  look. 
How  stands  the  case  ?     My  brother's  friend  and  mine 
Met  at  an  inn,  and  set  them  down  to  dine  ; 
When,  having  settled  all  their  own  affairs, 
And  kindly  canvassed  such  as  were  not  theirs, 
Just  as  my  friend  was  going  to  retire, 

"  Stay !   you  will  see  the  brother  of  our  squire," 
Said  his  companion  ;  "  be  his  friend,  and  tell  , 

The  captain  that  his  brother  loves  him  well. 
And  when  he  has  no  better  thing  in  view 
Will  be  rejoiced  to  see  him.     Now,  adieu  !  " 

"  'Well,  here  I  am  ;  and,  brother,  take  you  heed, 
I  am  not  come  to  flatter  you  and  feed. 
You  shall  no  soother,  fawner,  hearer,  find  ; 
I  will  not  brush  your  coat,  nor  smooth  your  mind ; 
I  will  not  hear  your  tales  the  whole  day  long, 


CBABBE.  101 

Nor  swear  you'  re  right,  if  I  believe  you  wrong ; 

I  will  not  earn  my  dinner  when  I  dine 

By  taking  all  your  sentiments  for  mine  ; 

Nor  watch  the  guiding  motions  of  your  eye 

Before  I  venture  question  or  reply. 

Yet,  son  of  that  dear  mother  could  I  meet  — 

But  lo !  the  mansion,  —  't  is  a  fine  old  seat !  ' 

"  The  brothers  met,  with  both  too  much  at  heart 

To  be  observant  of  each  other's  part. 
'  Brother,  I  'm  glad !  '  was  all  that  George  could  say, 
Then  stretched  his  hand,  and  turned  his  head  away ; 
Richard,  meantime,  made  some  attempt  to  speak, 
Strong  in  his  purpose,  in  his  trial  weak. 
At  length,  affection,  like  a  risen  tide, 
Stood  still,  and  then  seemed  slowly  to  subside  ; 
Each  on  the  other's  looks  had  power  to  dwell, 
And  brother  brother  greeted  passing  well.' ' 

These  qualities  of  fine,  true  physical  and 
mental  vision  are  the  essential  qualities  for 
valuable  realistic  work ;  if  there  be  room 
for  regret  in  Crabbe's  share  of  them,  it  is 
because  their  range  is  contracted.  The  lim- 
itations of  his  j)hysical  vision  have  been 
mentioned ;  in  respect  to  his  mental  vision 
Crabbe  saw  only  a  few  and  comparatively 
simple  operations  of  human  nature^  —  the 
workings  of  country-bred  minds,  not  finely 
or  comjilexly  organized,  but  slow-motioned, 
and  perplexed,  if  perplexed  at  all,  not  from 
the  difficulty  of  the  problem,  but  from  their 
own  duUuess.     Yet  within  these  limits  his 


102  CRABBE. 

characters  are  often  pathetic,  sometimes 
tragic,  or  even  terrible,  in  their  energy  of 
evil  passion  or  remorse. 

One  other  quality,  without  which  clear 
mental  and  physical  vision  would  be  inef- 
fective, is  essential  to  realism  like  Crabbe's, 
—  transparency,  the  quality  by  virtue  of 
which  life  is  seen  through  the  text  plainly 
and  without  distortion ;  and  this  is  the  qual- 
ity which  Crabbe  possessed  in  most  perfec- 
tion. He  not  only  saw  the  object  as  it  was ; 
he  presented  it  as  it  was.  He  neither  added 
nor  took  away ;  he  did  not  unconsciously 
darken  or  heighten  color,  soften  or  harden 
line.  Whatever  was  before  his  mind  —  the 
conversation  of  a  gossip,  the  brutality  of  a 
ruffian,  the  cant  of  a  convert  —  he  repro- 
duced truthfully  ;  whatever  was  the  charac- 
ter of  his  story,  mean  or  tragic,  trivial  or 
pathetic,  he  did  not  modify  it.  There  was 
no  veil  of  fancy,  no  glamour  of  amiable  de- 
ception or  dimness  of  charitable  tears,  to  ob- 
scure his  view  :  if  he  found  nudity  and  dirt, 
they  reappeared  in  his  work  nudity  and  dirt 
still;  if  he  found  courage  and  patience,  he 
dealt  the  same  even-handed  justice.  His 
distinction  is  that  he  told  a  true  story. 

It  was,  perhaps,  because  he  was  thus  able 


CRABBE.  103 

to  present  accurately  and  faithfully  the  hu- 
man life  which  he  saw  so  clearly  that  he  won 
such  admiration  from  Scott ;  for  Scott  had 
the  welcome  of  genius  for  any  new  glimpse 
of  humanity,  and  he  knew  how  rare,  and 
consequently  how  valuable,  is  the  gift  of 
simple  and  direct  narration  of  what  one  sees. 
Fox  had  great  sensibility  and  tenderness  of 
heart ;  and  Crabbe  presented  the  lot  of  the 
poor  so  vividly,  so  lucidly,  so  immediately, 
that  he  stirred  in  Fox  the  same  feelings  with 
which  a  better  poet  would  have  so  charged 
his  verses  that  natures  not  so  finely  endowed 
as  Fox  would  have  been  compelled  to  feel 
them  too.  Scott  and  Fox  knew  what  a  val- 
uable acquisition  this  realistic  sketch  of  hum- 
ble life  in  their  generation  was,  so  faithful, 
minute,  and  trustworthy ;  they  felt  that 
their  experience  was  enlarged,  that  real  hu- 
manity had  been  brought  home  to  them,  and 
in  the  sway  of  those  emotions,  which  Crabbe 
did  not  infuse  into  his  work,  but  which  his 
work  quickens  in  sympathetic  hearts,  they 
could  forgive  him  his  tediousness,  his  fre- 
quent commonplace,  his  not  unusual  absurd- 
ity of  phrase,  his  low  level  of  flight  with  its 
occasional  feebleness  of  win^. 

In  their  minds,  too,  his  style  must  have 


104  CRAB  BE. 

had  more  influence  than  we  are  apt  to  think, 
—  the  style  of  the  great  school  which  died 
with  him,  the  form  and  versification  which 
they  had  been  taught  to  believe  almost  es- 
sential to  the  best  poetry,  and  from  a  tradi- 
tional respect  for  which  they  could  hardly 
free  their  minds  as  easily  as  ourselves. 
Crabbe  used  the  old  heroic  rhymed  couplet, 
that  simplest  form  of  English  verse  music, 
which  could  rise,  nevertheless,  to  the  almost 
lyric  loftiness  of  the  last  lines  of  the  Dun- 
ciad  ;  so  supjale  and  flexible  ;  made  for  easy 
simile  and  compact  metaphor ;  lending  itself 
so  perfectly  to  the  sudden  flash  of  wit  or 
turn  of  humor  ;  the  natural  shell  of  an  epi- 
gram ;  compelling  the  poet  to  practice  all 
the  virtues  of  brevity ;  checking  the  wan- 
dering fancy,  and  repressing  the  secondary 
thought ;  requiring  in  a  masterly  use  of  it 
the  employment  of  more  mental  powers  than 
any  other  metrical  form  ;  despised  and,  neg- 
lected now  because  the  literature  which  is 
embodied  in  it  is  despised  and  neglected,  yet 
the  best  metrical  form  which  intelligence,  as 
distinct  from  poetical  feeling,  can  employ. 
Crabbe  did  not  handle  it  in  any  masterful 
way ;  he  was  careless,  and  sometimes  slip- 
shod ;  but  when  he  chose  he  could  employ  it 


CBABBE.  105 

well,  and  should  have  credit  for  it.  To  take 
one  more  example  from  his  poems,  how  ex- 
cellently he  uses  it  in  this  passage !  — 

"  Where  is  that  virtue  which  the  generous  boy 
Felt,  and  resolved  that  nothing  should  destroy; 
He  who  with  noble  indignation  glowed 
When  vice  had  triumph ;  who  his  tear  bestowed 
.      On  injured  merit  ?     He  who  would  possess 
Power,  but  to  aid  the  children  of  distress ! 
Who  has  such  joy  in  generous  actions  shown. 
And  so  sincere  they  might  be  called  his  own  ; 
Knight,  hero,  patriot,  martyr  !   on  whose  tongue 
And  potent  arm  a  nation's  welfare  hung,  — 
Where  now  this  virtue's  fervor,  spirit,  zeal  ? 
Who  felt  so  warmly,  has  he  ceased  to  feel  ? 
Or  are  these  feelings  varied  ?     Has  the  knight, 
Virtue's  own  champion,  now  refused  to  fight  ? 
Is  the  deliverer  turned  th'  oppressor  now  ? 
Has  the  reformer  dropt  the  dangerous  vow  ? 
Or  has  the  patriot's  bosom  lost  its  heat, 
And  forced  him,  shivering,  to  a  snug  retreat  ? 
Is  such  the  grievous  lapse  of  human  pride  ! 
Is  such  the  victory  of  the  worth  untried  I ' ' 

Scott  felt  an  attraction  in  such  poetic  form 
which  we  have  perhaps  ceased  to  feel ;  and 
Fox,  had  he  lived  to  read  it,  would  equally 
have  acknowledged  its  power. 

But  Wordsworth  said  Crabbe  was  unpo- 
etical ;  he  condemned  him  for  "  his  unpoet- 
ical  mode  of  considering  human  nature  and 
society  ; "  and,  after  all,  the  world  has  agreed 
with  Wordsworth,  and  disagreed  with  Scott 


106  CRABBE. 

and  Fox.  Wordsworth  told  Scott  an  anec- 
dote in  illustration  of  his  meaning.  Sir 
George  Beaumont,  sitting  with  himself  and 
Crabbe  one  day,  blew  out  the  candle  which 
he  had  used  in  sealing  a  letter.  Sir  George 
and  Wordsworth,  with  proper  taste,  sat 
watching  the  smoke  rise  from  the  wick  in 
beautiful  curves ;  but  Crabbe  seeing  —  or 
rather  smelling  —  the  object,  and  not  seeing 
the  beauty  of  it,  put  on  the  extinguisher. 
Therefore,  said  Wordsworth,  Crabbe  is  un- 
poetical,  —  as  fine  a  bit  of  assthetic  priggish- 
ness  as  is  often  met  with.  Scott's  opinion 
was  not  much  affected  by  the  anecdote,  and 
Wordsworth  was  on  the  wrong  track.  It 
is  true,  however,  that  Crabbe  was  unpoet- 
ical  in  Wordsworth's  sense.  Crabbe  had  no 
imaginative  vision,  —  no  such  vision  as  is 
shown  in  that  stormy  landscape  of  Shelley's, 
in  the  opening  of  The  Revolt  of  Islam,  which 
lacks  the  truth  of  actuality,  but  possesses 
the  higher  imaginative  truth,  like  Turner's 
painting,  or  that  shown  in  that  other  storm 
in  Pippa  Passes.  Crabbe  saw  sword-grass 
and  saltwort  and  fen,  but  he  had  no  secret 
of  the  imagination  by  which  he  could  min- 
gle them  into  harmonious  beauty ;  there  is 
loveliness  in  a  salt  marsh,  but  Crabbe  could 


CRABBE.  107 

not  present  it,  nor  even  see  it  for  himself. 
As  in  landscape  so  in  life.     Goldsmith  was 
untrue  to  the  actual  Auburn,  but  he  was 
faithful   to   a  far  more   precious  truth,  the 
truth  of  remembered  childhood,  and  he  re- 
vealed with  the  utmost  beauty  the  effect  of 
the  subtlest  working  of  the  spirit  of  man  on 
practical  fact ;  it  is  his  fidelity  to  this  psy- 
chological and  spiritual  truth  which  makes 
Auburn  the  "  loveliest  village  of  the  plain." 
Crabbe  exhibited  nothing  of  this  imagina- 
tive transformation  of  the  familiar  and  the 
commonplace,  perhaps  saw  nothing  of  it ;  he 
described  the  fishing  village  of  Aldborough 
as  any  one  with  good  powers  of  perception, 
who  took  the  trouble,  might  see  it.    Through 
these  defects  of  his  powers  he  loses  in  poetic 
value ;  his  poetry  is,  as  he  called  it,  poetry 
without  an   atmosphere  ;  it  is  a  reflection, 
almost  mirror-like,  of  plain  fact. 

Men  go  to  poetry  too  often  with  a  pre- 
conceived notion  of  what  the  poet  ought  to 
give,  instead  of  with  open  minds  for  what- 
ever he  has  to  give.  Too  much  is  not  to  be 
expected  from  Crabbe.  He  was  only  a  sim- 
ple country  clergyman,  half  educated,  with 
no  burning  ideals,  no  reveries,  no  passion- 
ate dreams;  his  mind  did  not  rise  out  of 


108  CBABBE. 

the  capabilities  and  virtues  of  respectability. 
His  life  was  as  little  poetical,  in  Words- 
worth's sense,  as  his  poetry.  Yet  his  gift 
was  not  an  empty  one.  Moore,  Scott,  and 
Byron  were  story-tellers  who  were  poetical, 
in  Wordsworth's  sense ;  but  is  Crabbe's  true 
description  of  humble  lifeless  valuable  than 
Scott's  romantic  tradition,  or  Moore's  melt- 
ing, sensuous  Oriental  dream,  or  Byron's  sen- 
timental, falsely-heroic  adventure  ?  Has  it 
not  another  value,  because  there  is  more  of 
the  human  heart  in  it ;  because  it  contains 
actual  suffering  and  joy  of  fellow-men  ;  be- 
cause it  is  humanity,  and  calls  for  hospitality 
in  our  sympathies  and  charities  ?  Unpoet- 
ical  ?  Yes  ;  but  it  is  something  to  have 
real  life  brought  home  to  our  tears  and 
laughter,  although  it  be  presented  barely, 
and  the  poet  has  trusted  to  the  rightness 
and  tenderness  of  our  hearts  for  those  feel- 
ings the  absence  of  which  in  his  verse  led 
Wordsworth  to  call  these  tales  unpoetical. 
But  it  is  only  when  Crabbe  is  at  his  best 
that  his  verse  has  this  extraordinary  power. 


I 


CHARLES   LAMB;    OR  ELIA. 

Charles  La]vib  really  came  into  this 
world  of  man  under  the  name  of  Elia ;  as 
a  "son  of  memory,"  so  was  he  christened, 
and  by  it  he  is  known,  for  it  is  the  name, 
not  of  his  creature-life,  but  of  his  better 
part.  His  personality  finds  expression  in 
it,  freed  from  the  sad  or  mean  accidents  of 
his  mortal  career ;  and  it  recalls  only  what 
in  him  was  touched  with  the  light  and 
shadow  of  an  inconstant  genius  or  pene- 
trated with  the  simplicity  of  the  heart,  and 
yet  leaves  room  for  that  eccentricity,  that 
strangeness  heightened  to  the  point  of 
quaintness,  which  is  an  element  in  the 
attractiveness  of  character  not  less  than, 
as  Bacon  declared,  in  beautiful  things. 
Elia  is  a  name  of  the  imagination ;  but  it 
was  borne  by  an  old  acquaintance,  an  Italian 
who  was  a  fellow-clerk  at  the  South-Sea 
House  when  Lamb  was  a  boy  there,  thirty 
years  before  he  sat  down  to  write  these 
Essays;  and,  as  a  piece  of  pleasantrj^  he 
borrowed  his  friend's  true  face  to  mask  his 

109 


110       CHARLES    LAMB;    OB    ELI  A. 

own.  He  went,  he  tells  us,  to  see  the 
Elia  of  flesh  and  blood,  and  laugh  over  the 
liberty  he  had  taken,  but  found  the  Italian 
dead;  and  the  incident  —  the  playfulness 
of  the  odd  plagiarism  ending  unexpectedly 
in  a  solemn  moment,  a  pathetic  close  — 
is  so  in  character  with  the  moods  of  these 
pages,  that  even  their  maker  could  not 
have  invented  better  what  life  gave  into 
his  hands.  The  name  had  devolved  upon 
him  now,  he  said;  he  had,  as  it  were, 
unknowingly  adopted  a  shade,  and  it  was 
to  go  about  with  him  thenceforth,  and 
watch  at  his  grave  after  he  too  should 
depart.  For  two  years  he  used  the  ruse 
of  this  ghost  of  a  name,  but  the  uncanni- 
ness  of  it  was  his  own  secret ;  to  the  reader 
of  the  London  Magazine^  in  which  he  pub- 
lished, Elia  was  —  what  it  is  to  us  —  a 
name  of  the  eternal  humorist  in  life's 
various  crowd.  , 

The  form  which  Lamb  chose  for  himself, 
the  familiar  essay  as  it  had  been  developed 
in  England,  was  as  well  fitted  to  him  as 
his  natural  voice.  He  had  begun  as  a 
poet,  but  he  lacked  the  condensation,  the 
directness  and  singleness  of  intellectual 
aim,  the  power  of  control,  which  are  es- 


CHARLES    LAMB;    OR    ELIA.        Ill 

sential  to  the  poet;  he  was  an  observer  of 
the  world  without,  a  rambler  in  all  things, 
and  tended  inevitably  to  that  dissipation 
of  the  eye  among  the  multitude  of  men 
and  things,  which  ends  in  prose ;  even  as 
a  humorist  he  loses  himself  in  his  impres- 
sions, and  becomes  reportorial.  But  he 
had  an  eye  for  oddities,  and  with  it  went 
the  saving  grace  that  he  loved  the  absurd 
in  man.  The  spirit  of  caricature  was  not 
in  him.  He  lived  in  a  nation  marked  by 
freedom  of  caprice,  and  in  its  chief  city; 
but  it  is  seldom  that  he  chooses  his  sub- 
ject from  among  those  whose  eccentricity 
is  self-assertive;  the  absurdities  that 
amuse  him  are  those  of  nature's  making, 
—  "the  fool"  whom  he  loves;  and  the 
peculiarities  that  arrest  him  are  oftenest 
those  which  result  from  the  misfortunes, 
the  rubs  and  dents,  all  the  rude  buffeting 
of  life  leaving  its  marks  on  the  form  and 
mind  of  those  who  are  submitted  to  its 
rule.  How  frequently  his  characters  are 
the  broken  "hulks"  of  the  voyage!  in 
what  author  is  old  age  so  dreary,  or  the 
boon  companion  so  shabby!  for  Lamb's 
humor  seldom  ends  in  the  laughable,  but 
is  a  plea  for  toleration,  sympathy,  forgive- 


112       CHARLES    LAMB;    OB    ELIA. 

ness,  —  the  old  phrase  of  the  prayer-book, 
miserable  sinners  are  we  all^  but,  princi- 
pally, small  sinners  in  small  things.  I 
cannot  free  myself  from  the  feeling  that, 
as  a  humorist.  Lamb  is  the  father-confessor 
of  venial  offences,  tender  to  waifs  and 
cripples,  the  refuge  of  the  victims  of  mean 
misery.  It  is  as  if  the  Good  Samaritan 
should  turn  humorist.  Yet  he  leaves  an 
impression  that  is  ill-rendered  by  such  a 
description,  because  he  blends  so  many 
strands  of  human  nature  with  this  main 
thread. 

The  charm  of  these  Essays  is  personal, 
and  it  is  made  a  mastering  one  by  the 
autobiography  they  contain.  Lamb  was 
not  less  an  egotist  than  a  humorist,  and 
in  the  familiar  essay  egotism  has  unim- 
peded way.  He  discloses  his  tastes  and 
habits,  and  disguises  not  those  things  in 
which  he  differs  from  conventional  man; 
he  is  proud  of  them,  and  goes  his  own 
pace.  There  is  infinite  amusement  in  a 
certain  kind  of  self-gossip,  seen  to  its 
perfection  in  Pepys;  and  though  Lamb's 
likings  in  meat  and  drink  are  not  to  be 
confounded  with  things  of  the  Pepysian 
order,  yet  the  tone  is  sometimes  not  to  be 


CHARLES    LAMB;    OR    ELIA.        113 

discriminated  from  such  "pure  idleness." 
The  sinister  reflection  of  how  much  social 
hypocrisy  saves  from,  of  what  concessions 
of  individual  preference  or  even  convic- 
tion are  made  to  the  company,  reacts  in 
us  and  heightens  the  enjoyment  when  an 
egotist  stands  to  his  egotism  and  is  un- 
abashed though  pilloried  in  men's  minds. 
Frankness  is  always  engaging,  and  Lamb 
wins  us  by  his  confidingness.  He  gives 
more  than  this  sense  of  intimacy ;  he  does 
really  surrender  himself,  and  all  his  rela- 
tives besides,  into  our  hands.  At  the  time 
he  had  the  grace  to  conceal,  by  appear- 
ances, the  characters  he  drew ;  but  the  veil 
was  thin,  and  nothing  is  now  left  of  it. 
His  strong  domestic  feeling,  his  love  for 
the  things  of  home,  enhance  the  humanity 
of  the  portrayal,  and  each  picture  is  seen 
beyond  the  contrasting  foreground  of  "  the 
lonely  hearth"  where  he  sits  writing; 
"the  old  familiar  faces"  are  illumined 
there,  in  the  later  years,  with  as  tender  a 
melancholy  as  in  the  poem  of  his  youth. 
Scenes  from  his  own  life  make  up  no  small 
portion  of  what  is  substantial  in  his  book ; 
and  the  humor  is  always  softened  by  the 
atmosphere  of  mingled  affection  and  sen- 


114        CHARLES    LAMB;    OR    ELIA. 

timent  in  which  it  woiks.  His  confessions 
of  childhood  are  especially  touching.  No 
one  has  revealed  the  poignancy  of  chil- 
dren's sufferings,  their  helplessness,  their 
solitariness,  their  hopelessness,  the  physi- 
cal nearness  of  all  grief  at  that  age,  with  a 
pen  so  crying  out  shame.  But,  as  in  his 
description  of  middle  and  elderly  life 
there  is  a  predominant  strain  of  misery  and 
triviality,  a  never-absent  pathos,  so  in 
what  he  draws  from  childhood,  where  are 
the  cheerfulness,  the  innocence,  the 
gayety,  the  wild  and  thoughtless  happi- 
ness? They  were  not  in  his  life.  Even 
his  child-angel  is  a  sorrowful  conception. 
When  he  was  "at  Christ's  "  —  was  it  such 
a  child's  hell?  and  was  that  all  he  knew 
of  chiildhood  ?  One  cannot  help  such  re- 
flections ;  and  they  underlie,  in  truth,  the 
melancholy  that  attended  him  and  the  sen- 
timent that  sprang  up  in  him,  both  of 
which  preserve  these  Essays  equally  with 
their  humor. 

Sentiment  stood  for  him,  perhaps,  in  the 
place  of  love  in  his  life.  The  romance, 
which    now    is    the    memory   of    "Alice 

W ,"  certainly  was  cherished,  in  the 

sphere  of  sentiment,  by  him  life-long;  and 


CHARLES    LAMS;    OR    ELI  A.        115 

in  his  musings  in  imagination  upon  what 
might  have  been,  there  is  much  of  that 
mournful  fancy,  that  affection  for  things 
unrealized,  which  betray  heart-hunger; 
even  in  his  attachment  to  old  places  and 
accustomed  ways,  and  to  what  he  called 
"  antiquity "  (of  which  in  his  own  mind 
he  and  his  belongings  were  part  and  par- 
cel), there  is  something  of  the  wandering 
of  the  else-unsupported  vine.  His  is  the 
sentiment  of  a  melancholy,  a  suppressed, 
down-borne,  and  retarded  nature,  cabined, 
cribbed,  confined.  It  was  almost  his  sole 
good  fortune  that  literature  offered  him  a 
resource  from  the  deprivations  of  his  life, 
and  gave  him  freedom  of  thought  and  feel- 
ing in  the  ideal  world;  there  he  found 
objects  worth  his  constancy,  and  being 
gifted  with  sensibility  and  discernment, 
he  became  a  discoverer  in  "  the  realms  of 
gold,"  an  antiquarian  whose  prizes  were 
lyrics  and  sonnets  and  snatches  of  song, 

"  And  beauty  making  beautiful  old  rhyme  ; " 

and  he  forsook  the  modern  days  to  delight 
himself  with  the  curious  felicity  of  the 
Arcadia  and  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  with 
single  great  scenes  of   the  Elizabethans, 


116       CHARLES    LAMB;    OR    ELI  A. 

and  with  the  breath  of  Marvell's  garden. 
He  escaped  into  the  golden  age,  into  "  an- 
tiquity,"  —  for  he  meant  by  that  favorite 
phrase  little  that  was  older  than  Sackville. 
It  is  easy  to  overestimate  the  service  of 
Lamb  and  his  friends  in  the  revival  of  the 
older  English  literature.  It  was  not  begun 
by  them.  Throughout  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury the  rill  of  Parnassus  had  been  flowing, 
and  now  the  stream  had  become  broad. 
Lamb's  group  was  borne  on  a  deeper  com- 
mon current.  But  he,  with  Coleridge, 
Hazlitt,  Hunt,  and  others  of  the  time  were 
agents  in  the  diffusion  of  the  new  taste, 
and  their  critical  appreciation  and  au- 
thority gave  them  a  place  as  supporters 
of  the  innovation,  sufficient  to  define  a 
historical  moment.  Lamb  is  not  to  be 
regarded  as  the  author  of  the  revival  of 
which  he  was  rather  a  part.  He  felt  it 
more  than  he  directed  it.  Leadership^  was 
not  in  his  bundle  of  qualities.  He  re- 
sponded, however,  to  the  influences  of  the 
re-discovered  literature  with  marvelously 
perfect  sympathy.  The  more  recondite 
and  esoteric  portions  of  it  were  most  to 
his  taste.  The  humorist  in  him  answered 
the  most  exigent  demands  of  the  occasion ; 


CHARLES   LAMB;    OR    ELIA.       117 

and  oddities  of  language  and  thought, 
conceits,  quaintnesses,  even  conscious  af- 
fectations, attracted  him,  just  as  the  same 
qualities  in  living  human  nature  called 
forth  his  motley-seeking  wits.  His  origi- 
nality, or  native  eccentricity,  felt  some- 
thing kindred  to  itself  in  the  old  writers  ; 
their  queernesses,  worn  like  nature,  kept 
his  own  in  countenance ;  their  affectations 
were  a  model  on  which  his  innate  whimsi- 
cality could  frame  itself.  And,  possibly, 
more  than  all  (yet  excepting  the  pure 
charm  of  poetry),  their  sentiment,  linger- 
ing on  from  days  of  chivalry  and  the  alle- 
gorical in  literature,  fed  a  fundamental 
need  of  the  emotional  nature  in  such  a  life 
as  Lamb's,  perforce,  was.  He  became  an 
imitator  of  antiquated  style,  a  mannerist 
after  his  favorites,  given  to  artifice  and 
fantasy  as  a  literary  method,  and  yet  he 
remained  himself.  The  disease  of  lan- 
guage does  not  penetrate  to  the  thought. 

Thus  there  were  mingled  in  Lamb  liter- 
ary artifice  with  truth  to  nature,  egotism 
with  humanity,  humor  with  sentiment,  — 
both  dashed  by  something  melancholy; 
and  one  spark  of  genius,  fusing  this  blend, 
has  made  the  book  of  Elia  a  treasure  to 


118       CHARLES    LAMB;    OR    ELIA. 

ra?cnj.  It  is  not  a  great  book,  but  it  is 
uncommonly  interesting.  It  is  human 
from  cover  to  cover.  The  subjects  may  be 
trivial,  the  company  "low,"  the  incidents 
farcical;  but  of  such  is  the  kingdom  of  this 
world,  —  at  least  it  was  so  in  London  then. 
Lamb  was  a  good  observer;  and,  as  in  the 
sketches  of  the  earlier  essayists  of  Queen 
Anne  literary  historians  point  out  the 
besrinninors  of  the  social  novel  of  the  next 
generation  in  that  century,  may  not  one 
find  a  foregleam  of  Dickens  in  these  pages, 
of  the  lot  of  children,  and  the  look  of  lives 
grown  threadbare,  and  the  virtues  hidden 
in  commonplace  people?  There  is,  no 
doubt,  the  trace  of  Smollett;  but  in  addi- 
tion is  there  not  the  spirit  of  humanity 
which  took  possession  of  our  fiction  and 
subdued  it  to  democracy?  The  exaggera- 
tion, both  of  humor  and  of  sentiment,  in 
Dickens,  the  master  of  the  craft,  Lamb 
was  free  from;  but  the  curious  tracer  of 
literary  moods  in  the  century  would  hardly 
hesitate  to  include  Lamb  in  the  succession. 
On  other  sides  Lamb  faced  the  past;  but 
here  was  his  one  window  on  the  times  he 
lived  in,  or  else  he  must  be  set  down  as 
one   of   those    "sports"   of    the   intellect 


CHARLES    LAMB;    OR    ELIA.        119 

which  have  no  relation  to  their  generation. 
In  description  and  in  character-drawing 
he  was,  of  course,  as  simply  personal  as  in 
his  criticism.  He  might  have  smiled  or 
scoffed  at  the  idea  that  he  was  a  forerunner 
in  fiction  as  that  he  was  a  leader  in  the 
romantic  movement.  He  cared  nought  for 
such  things,  as  little  as  for  science  or 
music.  He  worked  as  an  individual  only, 
and  told  his  recollections  or  described  his 
friends  and  acquaintances  just  as  he  read 
his  folios,  because  he  pleased  himself  in 
doing  it.  But  it  is  hard  for  a  writer, 
however  idiosyncratic,  not  to  be  a  link 
between  the  days.  The  taste  that  classes 
him,  in  his  work  as  a  humorist,  is  his  love 
of  Hogarth,  whom  he  appreciated  more  in- 
telligently and  full}^  perhaps,  than  any 
one  between  Fielding  and  Thackeray. 
When  it  is  objected  that  the  quality  of 
ordinary  life  as  he  presents  it  is  "seami- 
ness,"  we  should  recall  in  what  company 
he  exhibits  it;  and  if  his  humor  does  not 
always  hide  the  deformity  and  avoid  the 
pain  of  the  spectacle,  our  generation  is 
probably  more  acutely  aware  of  these 
things. 

The  human  interest  in  the  Essays,  how- 


120       CHAELES    LAMB;    OR    ELIA. 

ever,  is  not  confined  to  what  Lamb  saw  of 
the  absurd  and  grotesque,  the  cruel  and 
pathetic,  in  otlier  lives.  He  is  himself  his 
best  character,  and  best  drawn.  He  was 
extraordinary  self-conscious,  and  the  pages 
yield  little  that  he  did  not  mean  to  be  told. 
One  must  go  to  the  silent  part  of  his  biog- 
raphy to  obtain  that  sobering  correction  of 
his  whimsies  and  failings,  that  knowledge 
of  his  manliness  in  meeting  the  necessities 
of  his  situation,  that  sense  of  honesty,  in- 
dustry, and  generosity,  which  he  kept  out 
of  his  books.  The  side  that  most  men 
turn  to  the  world  he  concealed,  and  he 
showed  that  which  is  commonly  kept 
secret.  He  had  been  a  poet  in  youth,  and 
he  never  lost  the  habit  of  wearing  his  heart 
upon  his  sleeve.  He  was  never  as  a  poet 
to  get  beyond  sentiment,  which  in  a  ro- 
mantic age  is  but  a  little  way;  and  in 
degenerating  into  prose  (as  he  thought  it) 
he  gave  no  other  sign  of  poetic  endowment 
than  this  of  sentiment  that  he  could  not 
surrender;  but  to  what  a  length  he  carried 
it  without  exceeding  the  bounds  of  true 
feeling!  Sentiment,  like  humor,  needs  a 
delicate  craft;  but  he,  though  not  so  pene- 
trating, was  as  sure  of  hand  as  Burns. 


CHARLES    LAMB;    OR    ELIA.       121 

Even  under  the  temptation  of  an  antique 
style,  he  does  not  err:  with  affectation 
commanding  every  turn  and  cadence,  his 
feeling  goes  true ;  and  the  heart  answers 
to  it  through  all  the  gamut,  playful,  regret- 
ful, melancholy,  wailing.  The  word  is 
not  too  strong;  turn  to  The  Dream-Chil- 
dren, —  it  is  the  tragedy  of  sentiment. 
Other  moods  too  he  revealed,  and  espe- 
cially the  melancholy  ground  of  his  nature. 
He  disclaimed  the  fierce  earnestness,  the 
bitter  experience,  the  hopeless  despond- 
ency of  The  Confessions  of  a  Drunkard, 
nor  should  one  charge  him  with  the  bur- 
den of  so  dark  a  tale ;  but  that  there  are 
elements  of  autobiography  in  it,  of  things 
foreseen  if  not  experienced,  —  a  vision  of 
the  road  to  its  end,  —  is,  unhappily,  too 
plain  a  matter.  I  refer  to  it,  not  to  re- 
proach or  extenuate,  but  as  one  sign  of 
several  which  indicate  that,  like  all  natures 
lacking  in  the  principle  of  reason  and  con- 
trol. Lamb  was  subject  to  spells  of  peni- 
tence, of  bewildered  appeal,  which  were  at 
the  roots  of  that  insistent  melancholy,  and 
help  to  explain  why,  when  it  comes  upon 
the  page,  it  is  never  imaginative,  but 
always  real. 


122       CHARLES    LAMB;    OR    ELIA. 

Yet  Lamb,  though  always,  I  think,  a 
pathetic  figure  in  men's  memories,  does 
not  in  these  Essays  give  such  an  impres- 
sion except  at  moments,  just  as  he  affects 
us  only  at  intervals  with  the  dreariness  of 
the  human  life  he  describes.  One  reason 
is  that  his  personality  is  diffused  in  vary- 
ing essays,  and  is  given  completely  in 
none;  and  besides,  his  reputation  as  a  wit, 
and  what  we  know  of  his  suppers,  and  the 
whole  social  side  of  the  man,  blend  with 
the  mode  of  address,  the  familiarity,  the 
discursive  manner,  the  frequent  whim, 
the  anecdotage,  the  multifarious  interest 
of  the  whole.  The  Essays  are  pleasant  to 
read,  and  winning;  the  predominant,  and 
at  first  almost  engrossing  impression  is  of 
the  companionableness  of  the  writer,  —  he 
is  excellent  company.  The  style,  too,  is 
fitted  to  secure  its  effects.  We  know  that 
he  wrote  them  with  great  care,  and  some- 
times with  difficulty;  and  if  the  heart  of 
Lamb  is  always  close  at  hand  in  the  page, 
his  mind  is  there  too.  In  some  of  the  crit- 
ical parts  especially,  there  is  that  kind  of 
reflection  which  gives  substance  to  a  book 
otherwise  meant  simply  for  entertainment. 
Tlie  dramatic   sketches  also   lighten   the 


CHARLES    LAMB;    OR    ELIA.        123 

whole  effect  by  their  apparent  imperso- 
nality. It  is  only  when  the  more  famous 
papers  are  thought  of  by  themselves,  and 
those  most  autobiographical  in  matter,  that 
Lamb's  humor  and  sentiment,  his  egotism 
and  humanity,  his  literary  artifice  in  all, 
and  the  narrow  limits  within  which  these 
had  their  field,  become  so  prominent  as  to 
seem  to  constitute  the  book  as  well  as  the 
man.  These  qualities  have  established 
the  Essays  in  literature,  and  their  author, 
Elia,  in  the  affections  of  kind  hearts. 


THE  POETRY  OF  AUBREY  DE 
VERE. 

The  qualities  of  Aubrey  de  Vere's 
poetry  are  not  far  to  seek.  Lyrical  in 
verse,  strong  in  style,  mainly  historical  in 
theme,  heroic  or  spiritual  in  substance, 
above  all  placid,  it  stirs  and  tranquilizes 
the  soul  in  the  presence  of  lovely  scenes, 
high  actions,  and  those 

*'  Great  ideas  that  man  was  born  to  learn  ; " 

and  its  outlook  is  upon  the  field  of  the  soul 
regenerate,  where  suffering  is  remembered 
only  through  its  purification,  blessed  in 
issues  of  sweetness,  dignity,  and  peace. 
It  takes  wide  range,  but  is  predominantly 
either  Bardic  or  Christian.  The  sym- 
pathy of  the  poet  with  the  ancient  Irish 
spirit  must  have  been  fed  with  patriotic 
fervor,  akin  to  renewed  inspiration,  to 
permit  him  to  render  the  old  lays  of  his 
country  with  such  fidelity  to  their  native 
genius.  Cuchullain  once  more  becomes 
credible  to  fancy,  —  the  imagination  of  a 

124 


POETRY    OF   AUBREY   BE    VERE.      125 

childhood  world;  and  the  songs  of  Oiseen 
and  Ethell  strike  with  a  music  as  of  anvils. 
The  versions  of  the  three  monuments  of 
old   Irish   story  —  the    Sorrows    of    Song 
—  are  our  best.     The  English  lines  have 
the  definiteness  and  precision  that  belong 
to  primitive  narrative ;  and  yet  each  tale 
is    involved  in  that  atmosphere  of  "the 
shore  of  old  romance,"  of  the  marvelous, 
the  picturesque,  the  childlike,  which  ap- 
peals to  our  eyes  like   the   distances   of 
spring  —  the  haze  of  time  lying  along  the 
early  world.     In  each  of  the  three  mythic 
poems   there  are   pictures   of    novel   and 
strange  beauty:  the  boy,  Cuchullain,  rid- 
ing laughing  home  in  his   car   after   the 
deeds    of    his    knighting-day,    with    the 
leashed   wide-winged    birds    flying    over 
him,  the  six  leashed  stags  following  the 
chariot  captive,  the  bandits'  heads  upon 
its  front;  or,  the  lovers,  Naisi  and  Deir- 
dr^,  hand  in  hand  on  the  foot-bridge  pour- 
ing forth  the  lay  that  hemmed  them  with 
the  clansmen   of  Usnach;  or,    King  Lir, 
"with  under-sliding  arms,"  by  the  bed  of 
the   gold- woven    bridal   veil,    lifting   the 
children  from  its  dawn-touched  glittering 
tissue  to  "the  first  light  from  the  sky." 


126      POETRY    OF   AUBREY   BE    VERE. 

These  are  such  pictures  as  Burne-Jones  is 
too  often  thought  to  have  invented. 

Of  all,  Cuchullain  is  the  noblest  figure 
in  this  old  Irish  verse;  and  the  poem 
which  relates  his  deeds  —  with  its  epi- 
sodic tales  of  his  youth,  the  background 
of  his  island-boyhood  with  the  friend  he 
was  doomed  to  slay,  and  the  long  duel 
between  them  which  closes  in  his  lament 
over  the  dead  man  he  loved  and  his  retire- 
ment to  the  forest  —  is  so  inwrought  with 
bravery,  pathos,  and  emotional  beauty  as 
to  give  it  the  first  place,  while  the  hero's 
Achillean  return  to  the  host  places  it 
among  true  epics.  The  second  of  the 
three  Sorrows  —  The  Sons  of  Usnach 
—  is  characterized  by  a  strange  proces- 
sional beauty,  as  of  a  pageant  pilgriming, 
and  by  a  clear  spirit  of  joyf ulness  in  the 
midst  of  the  moving  cloud  of  fate,  like 
"the  tempest's  heart  of  calm."  But  the 
last  —  The  Children  of  Lir  —  touches 
the  heart  most  deeply.  The  idea  of  the 
poem  —  the  first  human  effort  to  extend 
the  bounds  of  Divine  Mercy,  to  reach 
through  the  "  dark  backward  and  abysm  " 
of  the  thousand  pagan  years,  and  gather  to 
its  fold  these  children  to  be  the  first-fruits 


POETRY    OF   AUBREY   BE    VERE.      127 

of  Christ  in  their  land  —  is  very  noble ;  but 
great  as  is  the  idea,  it  is  subdued  into  a 
simple  idyl  of  childhood.  The  poem  is, 
indeed,  unique,  and  the  handling  (Tenny- 
son treated  it  less  admirably)  is  exquisite. 
The  children  in  their  home  are  dear,  and 
in  their  transformation  into  swans  there  is 
no  discord.  The  swan-nature,  already 
half-human  in  poetic  tradition,  blends  of 
itself  with  the  ideal  image  of  childhood; 
and  the  nearness  of  the  little  exiles  to 
humanity,  after  their  change,  is  sustained 
by  their  mystical  night-long  singing  over- 
heard by  men,  and  by  the  tale  told  their 
poet  listening  solitary  by  the  sea  in  the 
sixth  century  of  their  woe.  In  their  life 
with  nature,  too,  a  new  aspect  sympa- 
thetic with  childhood  emerges ;  and  lastly, 
though  lost,  they  still  live  in  a  world  of 
their  own,  as  children  do.  This  beautiful 
tradition  of  the  Irish  race  must  become  a 
part  of  the  child-literature  of  our  language. 
The  Christian  element  in  this  last  story 
prepares  the  way  for  the  poet's  more  volu- 
minous and  distinctly  religious  work  — 
and  it  is  with  poets  of  religion  that  he  is 
to  be  classed  —  in  which  he  selects  his 
themes  from  the   saintly  legends  of  the 


128      POETRY    OF  AUBREY   BE    VERE 

Church,  and  shows  the  abundance  and 
power  of  that  life,  idealized  in  holy  tra- 
dition, which  converted  the  nations  and 
revivified  the  world.  The  Reformation 
was  a  source  of  great  mortality  in  litera- 
ture; and  the  loss  which  Protestantism 
sustained  in  surrendering  the  Catholic 
centuries,  with  their  long  record  of  this 
ideal  life  among  mankind,  was  a  spiritual 
deprivation  to  the  northern  imagination, 
which  the  noble  lives  of  three  later  cen- 
turies have  not  yet  made  good.  So  com- 
plete is  the  gap  now,  that  the  times  of 
which  these  poems  reflect  the  imaginative 
beauty  have  the  remoteness  of  a  golden 
age,  and  in  reading  the  verse  a  sense  of 
dreaminess  invades  the  mind.  This  por- 
tion of  the  poet's  work  makes  its  mass; 
and  its  interest,  though  various,  is  so  even 
that  one  could  as  easily  divide  the  summer 
landscape  as  choose  and  pick  amid,  its 
beauty.  The  subjects  are,  in  the  main, 
from  Irish,  English,  or  Roman  traditions 
of  the  early  Church.  The  tales  of  St. 
Patrick,  which  illustrate  the  conversion 
of  Ireland,  are  roughened  by  the  old  Bar- 
dic strength  overcome  by  the  new  gospel, 
and  masculine  vigor  is  thus  infused  into 


POETRY    OF   AUBREY   BE    VERE.      129 

it,  while  a  poetic  continuity  -with  the 
primitive  lays  is  preserved.  Aengus  is  a 
representative  instance  of  these  legends 
of  the  Christian  dawn,  but  milder  than 
the  most.  The  tales  of  Saxon  times, 
which  illustrate  the  conversion  of  Eng- 
land, are  almost  pastoral  in  tone;  and 
again,  St.  Cuthbert's  Pentecost,  is,  like 
Aengus,  only  a  solitary  example.  Others 
of  this  series,  are  shown  with  fine  imagina- 
tive effects,  like  that  of  the  lonely  Julian 
Tower  casting  the  shadow  of  Rome  on 
the  consecration  of  Westminster  Ab- 
bey:— 

"  On  Saxon  feasts  she  fixed  a  cold  gray  gaze  ; 
'Mid  Christian  hymns  heard  but  the  old  acclaim  — 
'  Consul  Romanus '  ;  " 

or,  with  eloquent  lines,  like  those  on  the 
Primates  of  Canterbury ;  — 

"From  their  fronts, 
Stubborned  with  marble  from  St.  Peter's  Rock, 
The  sunrise  of  far  centuries  forth  shall  flame  ;  " 

or,  with  passages  of  brief  pathos,  like 
Bede's  words:  — 

"  Poor  youth  !  that  love  which  walks  in  narrow  ways 
Is  tragic  love,  be  sure." 

The  poem,  devoted  to  Csedmon,  is  espe- 


130      POETRY    OF   AUBREY   BE    VERE. 

cially  rich  in  such  felicities  both  of  image 
and  phrase. 

So  these  Christian  poems  succeed  one 
another,  as  the  poet's  memory  wanders 
back  to  the  legends  of  the  Empire  on  the 
first  establishment  of  the  faith  in  Roman 
lands  and  along  Asian  shores,  or  moves 
through  mediaeval  times  with  Joan  of  Arc 
and  episodes  of  the  Cid  that  recall  Cuchul- 
lain  in  their  light-hearted  performance  of 
natural  deeds,  now  under  the  Cross.  The 
beauty  of  these  separate  stories  is  equable 
and  full  of  a  softened  charm ;  but  in  them, 
too,  as  in  the  Bardic  myths,  there  abides 
that  distance  of  time,  which  makes  them 
remote,  as  if  they  were  not  of  our  own. 
They  are  highly  pictorial ;  and  in  reading 
them,  each  secluded  in  that  silent,  old- 
world  air  that  encompasses  it,  one  feels 
that  here  is  a  modern  poet,  like  those  early 
painters  of  pious  heart  who  spent  th^ir 
lives  in  picturing  scenes  from  the  life  of 
Christ;  and  one  recalls,  perhaps,  some 
Convent  of  San  Marco  where  each  monas- 
tic cell  bears  on  its  quiet  walls  such  scenes 
from  the  shining  hand  of  the  Florentine 
on  whose  face  fell  heaven's  mildest  light. 
These  poems  of  Aubrey  de  Vere  —  to  char- 


POETRY    OF  AUBREY   BE    VERE.     131 

acterize  them  largely  —  are  scenes  from 
the  life  of  Christ  in  Man;  and  there  is 
something  in  them — in  their  gladness, 
their  luminousness,  their  peace  —  which 
suggests  Fra  Angelico,  the  halo  of  Chris- 
tian art. 

Yet  one  reads  to  little  purpose,  if  he 
does  not  discern  also  an  intellectual  ele- 
ment, constant  in  the  poet's  work,  which 
gives  it  mental  as  well  as  spiritual  char- 
acter. It  is  not  so  much  thought,  as 
comprehension,  which  his  poetry  most 
evinces :  that  comprehension  which  is  the 
genius  of  the  historian  and  grasps  the  gov- 
erning principles,  follows  the  essential 
ideas,  watches  the  doubtful  issues  of  the 
inward  world  of  conviction  and  illusion, 
of  which  alone  the  fate  is  significant. 
This  philosophic  interest  in  history  is 
most  directly  expressed  in  his  two  dramas, 
Alexander  the  Great  and  St.  Thomas 
of  Canterbury,  where  social  movements, 
so  irresistible  as  to  be  rightly  called  provi- 
dential principles,  were  centred  in  great 
personalities.  In  these,  his  eye  sees,  not 
the  men  merely,  but  ideas  greater  than 
they,  of  which,  indeed,  they  were  servants ; 
and  this  is  true,  also,  of  such  single  por- 


132     POETRT    OF   AUBREY   DE   VERS 

traits  as  Odin,  Constantine,  and  Hil- 
debrand.  His  prefaces  disclose  a  simi- 
lar distinctly  historical  aim  in  his  tales, 
but  their  character  as  particular  narra- 
tives renders  it  less  obvious ;  the  poetical 
element  in  them  absorbs  and  conceals  the 
didactic  purpose.  He  has  also  occasion- 
ally inwoven  in  his  verse  more  abstract 
and  purely  logical  argument,  of  which 
The  Death  of  Copernicus  is  an  example. 
His  sonnets  and  odes  show,  in  addition, 
occupation  with  political  and  other  modern 
questions.  In  his  single  contemporary 
Irish  tale.  The  Sisters  —  a  tale  which 
makes  one  regret  so  complete  an  absorption 
of  his  narrative  power  in  other  lines  — 
the  criticism  upon  Ireland's  history  has 
both  edge  and  weight,  and  its  conversa- 
tional temper  is  charming.  Together 
with  the  gaunt  reality  of  The  Year  of 
Sorrow,  this  story  of  the  actual  reveals 
the  heart  of  a  patriot,  near  to  his  living 
land.  Indeed,  in  whatever  division  of  his 
verse  he  approaches  the  subject  of  Ireland, 
his  style  gathers  fire,  and  often,  as  must 
be  the  case,  deepens  into  melancholy  pas- 
sion. This  is  shown  most  characteristi- 
cally in  the  ideal  conception  of  Ireland, 


POETRY    OF   AUBREY    BE    VERE.      133 

which  he  sometimes  suggests,  as  a  Sacri- 
ficial Nation,  whose  lot  is  to  show  forth 
spiritual  virtues  under  perpetual  earthly 
misfortune,  and  it  is  natural  to  such  a 
mind;  but  there  is  difficulty  even  in  its 
poetical  acceptance,  so  heavy  is  the  weight 
of  a  nation's  burden.  It  is  a  great  con- 
ception, but  it  is  not  a  political  idea.  It 
is  the  young  Richard's  refuge  —  "that 
sweet  way  I  was  in  to  despair."  But 
throughout  the  entire  range  of  national 
and  religious  themes  which  in  a  long  life- 
time the  poet  has  touched,  one  recognizes 
a  conscientious  and  keen  thoughtfulness 
as  well  as  the  other  qualities  of  warmth, 
imagination,  and  delight  in  natural  and 
moral  beauty  which  are  more  upon  the  sur- 
face of  the  verse ;  and  to  miss  this  reflec- 
tive temperament  would  be  to  lose  sight 
of  much  of  the  inward  significance  of  these 
longer  poems. 

Of  shorter  pieces  he  has  written  few  in 
comparison  with  the  body  of  his  work. 
For  one  who  belongs  to  the  generation  of 
Tennyson  and  was  the  youthful  friend  of 
Wordsworth,  the  impersonality  of  his  verse 
is  marked.  He  paid  the  tribute  to  Love, 
which  is  required  of  the  gentle  heart,  in 


134      POETRY    OF   AUBREY   BE    VERE. 

a  few  musical  lyrics,  usually  with  the  sad 
cadence ;  he  paid  also  his  tribute  to  human 
liberty  and  the  general  hope  of  man  in 
some  fervid  sonnets  that  spoke  from  the 
breast;  and,  lastly,  he  paid  his  tribute  to 
his  friends  —  for  he  was  rich  in  friend- 
ships —  laying  his  loyal  laurel  upon  each 
remembered  grave.  Finally  —  to  com- 
press much  miscellaneous  verse  into  small 
space  —  in  Antar  and  Zara  he  treated 
a  difficult  theme  of  love  with  a  delicacy 
and  truth  of  feeling  and  a  melodic  power 
that  justified  its  inscription  to  Tennyson ; 
in  many  odes  and  sonnets  he  exhibited  the 
love  of  nature,  the  sentiment  for  landscape 
and  its  living  creatures,  and  the  sense  of 
the  moral  power  of  the  external  world, 
which  became  a  true  disciple  of  Words- 
worth and  continuer  of  his  tradition  ;  and 
in  The  Search  after  Proserpine,  and  else- 
where, he  is  a  neighbor  to  Shelley.  <  In 
all  this  portion  of  his  work,  which  is  more 
nearly  related  to  his  own  century,  except 
at  rare  moments  he  remains  impersonal, 
and  deals  with  ideas  through  images,  in 
accordance  with  the  great  tradition  of 
poetry  from  the  first,  for  their  own  and 
not  for  the  poet's  sake. 


POETRY    OF   AUBREY   BE    VERE.      135 

Such,  in  general,  is  the  poet's  work. 
But  it  possesses  some  qualities  which  so 
highly  distinguish  it  in  modern  verse  and 
give  it  peculiar  character  beyond  what  has 
been  indicated,  that  a  word  more  must  be 
said.  One  constant  element  is  its  praise 
of  the  life  of  the  lowl}^,  in  the  old  Chris- 
tian sense,  as  the  soil  of  many  virtues,  and 
those  the  noblest  and  most  endearing.  The 
affinities  of  his  subject-matter,  both  on  the 
national  and  the  religious  side,  make  this 
natural ;  but  its  source  is  rather  in  a  true 
sympathy  with  lowly  lives  and  knowledge 
of  them,  whether  among  the  poor  by  fate 
or  those  who  have  renounced  by  choice  the 
things  of  fortune;  and  the  ground  of  this 
praise  —  and  this  is  the  significant  matter 
—  is  one  that  was  old  when  Rousseau  was 
born.  So  Truth  comes  into  her  own 
again.  A  second  distinguishing  element 
in  the  verse,  as  a  whole,  is  its  praise  of 
devotion,  that  loyal  surrender  to  a  man  or 
a  cause  which  is  one  of  the  ideal  passions 
of  Love,  and  the  vital  triumph  of  the  soul. 
To  realize  what  is  denoted  by  this  charac- 
teristic, and  how  sharply  it  severs  old  and 
new,  needs  only  a  thought  of  the  quite 
different  way  in  which  —  to  take  the  main 


136      POETRY    OF   AUBREY    BE    VERE. 

instance  —  Tennyson  presents  this  virtue, 
in  his  greatest  poem  of  man's  life  —  how 
maimed  and  impotent  in  Arthur,  Guine- 
vere, and  Lancelot,  how  doomed  to  tragic 
failure  in  the  lesser  persons,  for  Galahad's 
career  is  magical,  not  human ;  and  the  fact 
that  this  enfeebling  of  the  principle  of 
devotion  is  not  a  trait  that,  in  Tennyson, 
most  strikes  a  modern  reader,  measures 
the  distance  between  the  moral  ideals  that 
are  and  those  that  were.  In  this,  also, 
Aubrey  de  Vere  returns  to  the  ancient 
fountains.  A  third  such  element  in  the 
verse  is  its  purity,  which  is  due,  in  part, 
to  the  fact  that  the  poet  is  fond  of  youth, 
and  fills  his  poems  with  many  fair  figures, 
fresh  and  ardent  and  beautiful,  and  touches 
with  especial  delicacy  the  tenderness  of 
childhood  and  the  grace  of  boyhood,  so 
that  there  is  a  morning  air  in  his  world; 
but  something  is  also  due  to  his.  own 
limpid  sincerity  and  the  clarifying  power 
of  that  spirit  which  can  but  represent 
virtue,  however  suffering,  as  joyful.  His 
heroes  are  always  glad.  And  lastly,  to 
bring  these  remarks  to  an  end,  faith 
is  an  element  in  this  verse,  not  to  be 
passed  over  in  silence.     It  is  faith  of  the 


POETRY    OF   AUBREY    BE    VERE.      137 

sort  not  to  be  rivaled  among  our  poets  by 
any  other  than  Shelley,  —  faith  in  the 
power  of  truth  to  subdue  mankind  to  good- 
ness. What  to  Shelley  was  dream  and 
vision  is  here  that  golden  age  of  the  tri- 
umph of  Christ  over  the  heathen  world, 
when  whole  nations  heard  and  were  bap- 
tized. That  this  is  not  fanciful  paradox 
a  single  passage  will  show,  and  it  affords 
a  striking  and  useful  literary  parallel:  — • 

"  They  slept  not,  on  the  loud-resounding  shore 
In  glory  roaming.     Many  a  feud  that  night 
Perished  ;  and  vengeful  vows,  now  mockery  made, 
Lay  quenched  in  their  own  shame.      Far  shone  the 

fires 
Crowning  dark  hills  with  gladness  ;  soared  the  song ; 
And  heralds  sped  from  coast  to  coast  to  tell 
How  He  the  Lord  of  all,  no  Power  Unknown, 
But  like  a  man  rejoicing  in  his  house, 
Ruled  the  glad  earth.  .  ,  . 

With  earliest  red  of  dawn 
Northward  once  more  the  wingfed  war-ships  rushed, 
Swift  as  of  old  to  that  long  hated  shore  — 
Not  now  with  ax  and  torch.      His  Name  they  bare 
Who  linked  in  one  the  nations." 

This  is  the  feast,  the  chant,  the  flame  of 
Laon  and  Cythna.  In  this  faith,  again, 
there  is  the  fundamental  Christian  quality, 
that  older  spirit,  of  which  the  other  ele- 
ments that  have  just  been  mentioned  are 


138      POETRY    OF   AUBREY    BE    VERE. 

also  branches.  Thus,  in  all  this  poetry, 
however  its  phases  be  successively  turned 
to  the  eye,  or  itself  be  inwardly  searched, 
there  is  one  light  and  one  breath  —  the 
light  of  the  Spirit  and  the  breath  thereof. 
It  cannot  but  have  a  peculiar,  though  in 
its  own  century  almost  an  exotic,  charm. 
Joy  and  peace,  the  first  Christian  message, 
spread  abroad  with  its  music ;  and,  heard 
or  unheard,  the  song  of  the  poet  speeds 
that  old  evangel. 


AUBREY  DE  YERE  ON  POETRY. 

It  is  rare  good  fortune  to  find  criticism 
in  which  the  ideas  are  more  excellent  than 
the  manner,  and  the  spirit  finer  than  the 
ideas  ;  in  which  it  is  not  the  keener  sym- 
pathy of  the  poet  that  speaks,  or  the  sure 
sense  of  the  trained  artist  for  expression,  or 
any  siugle  faculty,  but  the  whole  nature  of 
the  man  ;  in  which  the  judgment  rendered 
does  not  proceed  from  any  particular  part 
of  his  mind  —  the  scholarly  or  moral  or  aes- 
thetic element  by  itself  —  but  is  felt  to  be 
grounded  upon  his  total  convictions.  Au- 
brey de  Vere's  essays,  therefore,  are  worth 
more  than  ordinary  attention.  He  writes 
principally  of  Spenser  and  Wordsworth,  and 
also  of  Milton,  Shelley,  and  Keats.  He 
considers  mainly  the  doctrine  of  this  poetry. 
He  values  it  chiefly  for  its  highest  office  as  a 
teacher  of  moral  wisdom,  and  a  quickener  of 
the  spiritual  part  of  our  nature.  He  justly 
decides  that  its  real  subject  is  man's  life  ; 
this  is  the  centre  of  interest  in  all  great 

139 


140        AUBREY  BE  VEEE  ON  POETRY. 

thought,  and  the  rest  is  but  ornament  and 
episode.  He  is  a  Christian  idealist,  and  he 
refuses  to  regard  poetry  except  in  the  light 
of  those  great  ideas  which  belong  to  the 
spirit,  and,  being  nobly  and  beautifully  in- 
terpreted, are  the  substance  of  the  poets 
who  live  by  their  wisdom  as  well  as  by 
charm.  The  ethical,  the  philosophical  ele- 
ment in  a  large  sense,  is  to  him  the  engross- 
ing thing  ;  and  criticism  of  this  sort,  so  in- 
cited and  so  aimed,  has  a  reality  that  does 
not  fall  far  short  of  the  worth  of  direct  re- 
flection upon  the  things  of  the  mind,  though 
it  deals  with  them  through  the  medium  of 
literature  instead  of  in  life  itself. 

With  Spenser,  naturally,  he  has  many 
affinities.  The  medisevalism,  the  sentiment 
of  chivalry,  the  allegorizing  spirit,  and  not 
less  the  Puritan  elevation  of  the  first  of  the 
Elizabethan  poets,  exercise  a  special  fasci- 
nation over  a  Catholic  mind  for  whom,  the 
Ages  of  Faith,  as  he  likes  to  call  them,  have 
in  a  peculiar  degree  the  ideality  that  clothes 
the  past.  One  no  longer  looks  for  original 
criticism  of  the  father  of  English  verse, 
who,  more  than  Chaucer,  may  claim  the  pa- 
ternity of  great  poets  in  later  days  ;  but  to 
remind  us  of  his  excellence  has  become,  in 


AUBREY  DE  VEBE  ON  POETRY.       141 

the  lapse  of  time  and  the  decline  of  poetic 
taste,  almost  as  desirable  an  office  as  it  once 
was  to  unfold  its  secret.  Spenser  is  a  poet 
who  requires  no  common  critic  to  speak 
justly  of  him.  His  position  was  a  unique 
one,  and  by  some  infelicity  of  his  stars  he 
failed  to  rise  to  the  greatness  which  seems  to 
have  been  possible  to  him.  Aubrey  de  Vera 
remarks  that  the  great  romantic  poem  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  one  that  should  sum  them  up 
on  the  human  as  Dante  did  upon  the  divine 
side,  was  never  written  ;  and,  looking  back, 
it  appears  to  us  that  Spenser  was  the  choice 
spirit  that  missed  this  destiny.  His  pure 
poetic  quality,  that  sensibility  to  beauty  and 
delight  in  it  as  in  his  element,  was  perfect 
to  such  a  degree  that  Milton  and  Keats,  who 
possessed  it  in  something  of  the  same  meas- 
ure, seem  almost  to  have  derived  it  from 
him,  whose  poems  nourished  it  in  them.  The 
sweetness  and  noble  ease  of  his  expression 
reveal  the  presence  of  a  marvelous  literary 
faculty.  His  responsiveness  to  the  histor- 
ical and  legendary  elements  in  the  past,  his 
power  of  abstracting  and  idealizing  them 
for  poetic  use,  and  his  profound  interest  in 
human  life,  were  great  endowments,  and  he 
possessed  in  a  high  degree  and  a  pure  form 


142       AUBREY  DE  VEBE  ON  POETRY. 

that  moral  reason  which  is  the  attribute  of 
genius.  But  by  defects  as  striking  as  this 
gift  he  made  his  poem  less  than  we  fondly 
think  it  might  have  been.  The  Elizabethan 
prolixity,  the  obscure  perception  of  the  na- 
ture of  form  in  literary  work,  the  artificial- 
ity incident  to  the  allegorizing  temperament, 
account  for  much  of  what  he  lost ;  but,  for 
all  that,  his  poems  are  marvels  of  the  crea- 
tive intellect,  and  it  is  this  intellect  that  Au- 
brey de  Vere  dwells  on.  Any  one  can  point 
out  Spenser's  loveliness,  but  the  great  spirit 
that  brooded  over  his  verse  is  not  so  easily 
realized.  His  aim  was  "  to  strengthen  man 
by  his  own  mind,"  and  it  is  this  effort  which 
the  critic  analyzes,  and  by  so  doing  tries 
to  show  how  well  he  deserved  the  epithet 
"grave  "  as  well  as  "  gentle  Spenser." 

His  work,  with  its  intricate  allegory,  its 
machinery  of  faeryland  and  chivalry,  its 
ideal  landscape,  is  regarded  as  remote  fpom 
life  ;  but  just  as  the  creations  of  art,  which 
also  have  this  unreality,  are  yet  the  expres- 
sion, oftentimes,  of  the  most  real  human 
feeling  and  the  most  substantial  thought  of 
the  mind,  so  the  figures  of  his  embroidered 
poem  compose  a  procession  of  true  life. 
They  are  conceived  and  used  in  accordance 


AUDEEY  BE  VEEE  ON  POETRY.       143 

with  a  comi^reliensive  doctrine  of  the  nature 
of  humanity,  which  Spenser  undoubtedly 
meant  to  enforce  through  the  medium  of  the 
imagination  ;  this  doctrine,  in  fact,  is  the 
stuff  they  are  made  of. 

It  is  not  an  easy  thing  to  resolve  into  its 
moral  elements  the  creations  of  a  poet  who 
blends  many  strains  of  truth.  His  method 
is  not  the  consecutive  process  of  logical  re- 
flection and  explication,  but  the  simultane- 
ous embodiment  of  what,  however  arrived 
at,  he  presents  as  intuitive,  needing  only  to 
be  seen,  to  be  acknoAvledged.  In  the  analy- 
sis, the  distinctive  poetic  quality  is  too  apt 
to  be  dissipated,  and  the  poet  is  forgotten  in 
the  philosopher.  Certain  broad  aspects  may 
be  easily  made  out.  Chivalry,  with  its  crowd 
of  faery  knights,  certainly  rests,  in  Spenser's 
great  work,  upon  the  old  conception  of  the 
Christian  hfe  as  one  militant  against  the 
enemies  of  the  soul  in  the  woi-ld ;  and  quite 
as  clearly  he  also  represents  this  life  as  be- 
ing, within  the  breast,  ideal  peace.  Peace 
within  and  war  without :  these  are  two  root- 
ideas  out  of  which  the  poem  flowers  on  its 
great  double  branches.  He  teaches  sj)ecif- 
ically  how  to  attain  self-control,  and  how  to 
meet  attacks  from  without ;  or  rather  how 


144        AUBREY  DE  VERE  ON  POETRY. 

to  seek  those  many  forms  of  error  which  do 
mischief  in  the  world,  and  to  overcome  them 
for  the  world's  welfare.  This  is  a  bald  state- 
ment, but  it  indicates  well  enough  in  what 
way  Spenser  employed  the  knightly  ideal  of 
succor  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  Christian 
ideal  of  moral  perfection  on  the  other,  in  or- 
der to  make  a  poem  which  should  instruct 
as  well  as  delight  the  world.  He  himself  as- 
serts that  his  aim  was  so  lofty,  and  to  a  man 
such  as  he  was  a  lower  aim,  a  merely  artistic 
purpose,  would  have  been  impossible.  It  is 
fortunate  that  he  was  not  less  endowed  with 
the  sense  of  loveliness  than  with  a  serious 
mind  ;  for  he  thus  illustrates  not  only  the 
possible  union  of  the  two  principal  aims  of 
poetry  in  all  times,  but  also  the  truth  that 
to  a  man  whose  perception  of  beauty  is  most 
perfect  the  beauty  of  holiness  is  the  more 
impressive  and  authoritative  in  its  com- 
mands. Aubrey  de  Vere  devotes  himself 
especially  to  the  declaration  and  the  proof 
that  Spenser's  poetic  character  was  essen- 
tially that  of  a  man  deeply  interested  in 
human  life,  and  he  tries  to  prevent  the 
poet's  severely  ideal,  and  sometimes  fantas- 
tic, method  from  obscuring,  as  for  many 
minds  it  does,  the  real  nature  of  that  alle- 


AUBREY  BE  VEEE  ON  POETRY.      145 

gory,  so  marvelous  for  invention,  eloquence, 
and  perpetual  charm  of  style,  which  is  sel- 
dom thought  to  be  more  than  an  intricate 
and  lovely  legend  of  the  imagination.  The 
critic  is  not  blind  to  the  great  defects  of  the 
work,  —  and  no  poem  of  equal  rank  has 
more,  —  nor  does  he  neglect  the  excellences 
that  are  obvious  to  the  least  thoughtful 
reader ;  but  he  succeeds  in  placing  before 
us  its  intellectual  and  moral  substance. 

In  doing  this  he  reveals  his  own  theory  of 
poetry,  and  it  is  one  that  derives  its  philoso- 
phy from  the  gi'eat  historic  works  of  our  lit- 
erature, and  is  grounded  on  the  practice  of 
the  English  masters  whose  fame  is  secure. 
Its  cardinal  principle  is  that  man  is  the  only 
object  of  interest  to  man,  all  else  being  sub- 
ordinate, and  valuable  only  for  its  relations 
to  this  main  theme  ;  and  more  particularly 
this  subject  is  the  spiritual  life,  not  the  ma- 
terial manifestations  of  his  energies  in  deeds 
apart  from  their  meaning.  The  Italian  mas- 
ters of  Spenser  too  often  lost  themselves  in 
incident,  in  romance,  in  story  for  its  own 
sake  ;  they  were  destitute  of  that  ethical 
spirit  which  insists  on  planting  in  the  deeds 
their  significance,  and  regarding  this  as  an 
integral,  and  indeed  the  only  immortal,  part 


146       AUBREY  BE  VEEE  ON  POETRY. 

of  the  action.  The  laws  of  life,  not  the 
chances  of  individuals,  were  Spenser's  sub- 
ject, and  in  this  he  differs  from  Ariosto,  and 
leaves  his  company.  Spenser's  genius  was 
thus  abstract  and  contemplative,  and  Pla- 
tonic in  the  sense  that  he  used  images  always 
with  some  reference  to  the  general  truths 
that  transcend  imagination,  and  are  directly 
apprehended  only  intellectually.  Allegory 
was  therefore  his  necessary  method.  Spen- 
ser never  succeeded  in  harmonizing  the  dis- 
parate elements  of  the  material  to  which  he 
fell  heir  by  literary  tradition  ;  and  besides 
the  inconsistencies  and  incoherencies  of  the 
Renaissance  culture,  which  never  reached 
any  unity  in  its  own  time,  there  were  also 
special  disturbances  in  his  intellectual  life 
because  of  the  political  and  religious  con- 
flicts in  England  itself,  from  entanglement 
with  which  he  was  not  free  ;  and,  moreover, 
he  does  not  seem  to  have  subdued  the  philo- 
sophical and  poetic  impulses  of  his  own  na- 
ture to  any  true  accord.  His  poem,  there- 
fore, did  not  take  on  that  perfection,  that 
identity  of  purpose  and  execution,  which 
would  have  placed  it  in  the  first  rank,  and 
he  remains  below  the  supreme  poets  of  the 
world.     The  study  of  his  work,  as  an  illus- 


AUBREY  DE  VERE  ON  POETRY.       147 

tration  of  the  conditions  and  art  of  poetry, 
is  most  instructive.  Its  defects  teach  more 
than  its  excellence,  but  they  do  not  disturb 
the  theory  which  Aubrey  de  Vere  sets  forth ; 
and  he  would  be  but  a  blind  critic  who 
should  easily  argue  that  Spenser  succeeded 
when  he  obeyed  the  pure  artistic  impulse, 
and  failed  because  of  the  interference  of  his 
graver  genius  with  the  poetical  mind,  his 
thought  with  his  sensibility. 

Aubrey  de  Vere's  contemplative  mind,  his 
strong  hold  on  the  abstract  rather  than  on 
the  concrete,  help  him  over  the  poetically 
dry  places  in  Spenser,  and  serve  him  even 
better  in  the  case  of  Wordsworth.  This  is 
choosing  the  better  of  two  alternatives ;  for, 
if  the  landscape  of  Arcady  is  incomplete  for 
him  unless  there  is  some  "swan -flight  of 
Platonic  ideas  "  over  it,  such  as  he  says  is 
always  in  Spenser's  sky,  he  has  an  appreci- 
ation for  beauty  as  steadfastly  as  for  the 
higher  truths  of  life,  and  it  is  better  to  suffer 
with  deficiencies  in  poetic  art  for  the  sake  of 
the  matter  than  to  be  content  with  art  alone. 

The  great  difference  between  Wordsworth 
and  Spenser  is,  that  Spenser  was  concerned 
with  the  moral  virtues  and  ma.n's  acquire- 
ment of  them,  while  Wordsworth  was  more 


148       AUBREY  BE  VERE  ON  POETRY. 

narrowly  limited  to  the  influence  of  nature 
in  forming  the  soul.  Both  looked  to  the 
same  end,  —  spiritual  life  ;  but  Wordsworth 
had  a  different  starting-point.  His  mind 
was  more  individual,  and  he  assumed  that 
his  own  history  was  typical ;  he  was  less  rich 
in  the  stores  of  antiquity,  and  he  had  less 
sensibility  to  beauty  in  its  ideal  forms  ;  but 
he  knew  the  place  that  nature  held  in  his 
own  development,  and  he  became  specifically 
the  poet  of  nature,  not  only  as  beauty  visible 
to  the  eye,  but  also,  and  mainly,  as  an  invis- 
ible influence  in  the  lives  of  men.  Much  of 
his  verse  was  a  pastoral  form  of  philosophy ; 
meditation  counted  for  more  than  beauty  in 
it ;  but  the  scene  was  the  English  country, 
and  the  characters  were  rustics.  There  was, 
too,  something  of  imaginative  untruth  in 
it,  no  doubt,  similar  to  that  inherent  in  all 
pastoral  poetry.  These  common  men,  how- 
ever, were  not  individuals,  but  stood  ,for 
man,  and  Wordsworth,  in  delineating  their 
histories,  was  writing  a  parable  as  well  as 
a  story.  In  other  portions  of  his  verse  he 
used  a  more  abstract  method.  As  a  moral- 
ist he  was  much  given  to  maxims ;  and  in 
all  that  concerns  the  social  and  political  life 
of  man,  as  well  as  his  personal  relations  to 


AUBREY  DE  VERE  ON  POETRY.        149 

virtue,  Wordsworth  was,  as  the  critic  affirms 
with  much  emphasis,  filled  with  a  certain 
ardor,  which  may  be  called  passion  if  one 
likes.  The  lack  of  passion  in  the  ordinary 
sense  —  and  it  cannot  be  made  out  that 
Wordsworth  possessed  this  quality  —  only 
renders  more  plain  the  moral  endowment  of 
the  poet,  his  absorbing  interest  in  the  manly 
virtues,  and  the  supreme  value  which  he 
placed  on  the  spiritual  life  and  its  ideal  rela- 
tions. He  considered  these  relations  most  di- 
rectly as  existing  toward  nature,  and  having 
their  operation  in  the  emotion  which  nature 
excites.  He  did  not  altogether  escape  from 
the  pantheism  incident  to  such  a  constant 
preoccupation  of  the  mind  with  the  works 
and  course  of  nature,  and  consequently  he  is 
less  distinctively  Christian  than  Spenser ; 
but  Aubrey  de  Vere  easily  makes  it  out  that 
Wordsworth's  philosophy,  much  as  it  differed 
from  Spenser's,  is  concerned  with  the  same 
topics  of  moral  and  spiritual  life,  and  is  the 
substance  of  his  poetry. 

It  is  not  surprising  that  a  writer  of  Au- 
brey de  Vere's  temperament  is  annoyed  by 
the  charge  that  Wordsworth  is  destitute  of 
"  passion."  He  has  much  to  say  on  this 
point.    Wordsworth  himself  gave  as  the  rea- 


150       AUBBEY  DE  VERE  ON  FOETBY. 

son  why  he  did  not  write  love-poems  the  fear 
that  they  would  be  too  passionate.  Aubrey 
de  Vere  makes  what  defense  he  can  by 
pointing  out  the  half-dozen  idealizations  of 
woman  in  the  shorter  lyrics ;  but  his  real 
apology  consists  in  the  counter-assertion  that 
Wordsworth  is  especially  distinguished  for 
"  passion."  He  uses  the  word,  however, 
with  a  difference,  and  means  by  it  the  poetic 
glow,  the  exaltation  of  feeling,  the  lyrical 
possession,  which  attends  the  moment  of 
creation  and  passes  into  the  verse.  Of  this 
sort  of  passion  every  form  of  poetry  is  as 
capable  as  is  the  amorous :  the  sceva  indig- 
natio  of  satire  would  come  under  this  head 
as  properly  as  the  moral  enthusiasm  or  the 
patriotic  fervor  shown  in  the  Ode  to  Duty 
or  the  Sonnets.  Wordsworth  truly  possessed 
this  capability,  and  it  gives  to  his  poems 
their  masculine  strength.  Whether  equal 
success  is  to  be  credited  to  the  critic's  glosses 
upon  the  more  commonplace  subjects  of 
Wordsworth's  muse,  is  doubtful ;  it  seems 
rather  that  he  makes  the  mistake  which  Cole- 
ridge attributed  to  Wordsworth  himself,  of 
giving  a  value  to  the  idea  which  it  has  in  his 
own  mind,  but  which  it  does  not  have  in  the 
bare  words  addressed  to  the  reader.     When 


AUBREY  DE  VERE  ON  POETRY.        151 

the  idea  and  the  expression  are  not  identi- 
cal, every  poet  suffers  from  this  cause ;  in 
his  mind  the  idea,  coming  first,  dignifies  the 
words,  but  to  the  reader  the  words  coming 
first,  too  often  mutilate  the  idea.  It  is  a 
good  result  of  Aubrey  de  Vere's  Words- 
worthianism  that  it  gives  him  courage  to 
force  into  the  front  of  his  essay  the  Orphic 
Odes,  which  are  among  the  least  known  of 
the  poet's  work,  and  contain  some  of  the  no- 
blest of  his  lines. 

To  Milton  he  seems  somewhat  unjust. 
The  earlier  poems  receive  his  warm  appreci- 
ation, but  of  the  later  ones  he  is  hardly  so 
tolerant,  and  nowhere  does  he  give  him  his 
due.     This  is  the  passage :  — 

"  It  is  not,  however,  its  deficient  popu- 
larity so  much  as  its  subject  and  its  form 
which  proves  that  Milton's  great  work  is  not 
a  national  poem,  high  as  it  ranks  among  our 
national  triumphs.  Some  will  affirm  that 
he  illustrated  in  that  work  his  age  if  not  his 
country.  His  age,  however,  gave  him  an 
impulse  rather  than  materials.  Puritanism 
became  transmuted,  as  it  passed  through  his 
capacious  and  ardent  mind,  into  a  faith  He- 
braic in  its  austere  spirit  —  a  faith  that  sym- 
pathized indeed  with  the  Iconoclastic  zeal 


152       AUBREY  BE  VERE  ON  POETRY, 

which  distinguished  the  anti-Catholic  and 
anti-patristic  theology  of  the  age,  but  held 
little  consort  with  any  of  the  complex  defini- 
tions at  that  time  insisted  on  as  the  symbols 
of  Protestant  orthodoxy.  Had  the  Puritan 
spirit  been  as  genuine  a  thing  as  the  spirit 
of  liberty  which  accompanied  it ;  had  it  been 
such  as  their  reverence  for  Milton  makes 
many  suppose  it  to  have  been,  the  mood 
would  not  so  soon  have  yielded  to  the  licen- 
tiousness that  followed  the  Restoration.  .  .  . 
To  him  the  classic  model  supplied,  not  the 
adornment  of  his  poem,  but  its  structure 
and  form.  The  soul  that  wielded  that  mould 
was,  if  not  exactly  the  spirit  of  Christianity, 
at  least  a  religious  spirit  —  profound,  zeal- 
ous, and  self-reverent  —  as  analogous,  per- 
haps, in  its  temper  to  the  warlike  religion 
of  the  Eastern  Prophet  as  to  the  traditional 
faith  of  the  Second  Dispensation.  Such  was 
the  mighty  fabric  which,  aloof  and  in  ^lis 
native  land  an  exile,  Milton  raised  ;  not  per- 
fect, not  homogeneous,  not  in  any  sense  a 
national  work,  but  the  greatest  of  all  those 
works  which  prove  that  a  noble  poem  may 
be  produced  with  little  aid  from  local  sym- 
pathies, and  none  from  national  traditions." 
Some   expressions   in   this   passage,  and 


AUBREY  DE  VERE  ON  POETRY.       153 

many  others  scattered  througli  these  volumes, 
indicate  where  the  current  of  sympathy  was 
broken  by  default  of  which  the  critic  under- 
stands Milton  imperfectly.  Ideal  he  was,  but 
there  is  no  poet  who  is  more  bone  and  flesh 
of  the  English  nation  in  the  substance  of  his 
genius,  or  in  whom  it  developed  a  spirituality 
more  noble  ;  nor  are  his  defects,  in  his  concep- 
tion of  womanhood  for  example,  such  as  can- 
not be  easily  paralleled  from  the  other  poets 
of  highest  genius  in  the  line  from  Spenser. 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  critic  is  more 
than  just  to  Keats,  and  towards  Shelley  he 
exhibits  a  respect,  a  penetration  of  the  ele- 
ments of  his  thoughtful  temperament,  and  a 
comprehension  of  the  remarkable  and  inti- 
mate changes  of  his  incessant  growth,  that 
are  almost  unexampled  in  authors  writing 
from  Aubrey  de  Vere's  standpoint.  In  writ- 
ing of  the  others  he  has  opportunity  for  still 
further  illustration  of  the  theory  of  poetry 
he  holds,  and  he  shows  that  these  later  poets 
have  their  best  success  the  closer  they  keep 
to  the  subject  of  man,  and  the  more  they 
treat  it  with  a  pure,  spiritual  method ;  while 
on  the  other  hand,  they  are  defective  in  pro- 
portion as  they  fail  in  this. 

It  would  be  impossible  for  a  critic  with 


154       AUBREY  DE  VERE  ON  POETRY. 

such  standards  as  these  to  pass  iu  review  the 
work  of  the  modems,  and  not  to  notice  tlie 
general  decline  in  the  moral  weight  and  the 
spirituality  of  late  poetic  literature.  Mate- 
rialism, both  as  respects  the  objects  of  man's 
pursuit  and  the  character  of  his  speculation 
in  philosophy,  has  been  so  important  and 
growing  a  factor  of  the  times,  that,  if  there 
is  any  validity  in  this  theory  of  poetry,  it 
must  follow  that  our  poetic  work  has  lost 
elevation,  meaning,  and  utility.  Religion  it- 
self, so  far  as  the  general  thought  of  nine- 
teenth-century civilization  is  concerned,  has 
suffered  a  diminution  of  its  authority,  and 
consequently  the  spiritual  life  of  man  has 
filled  a  less  prominent  part  in  the  eyes  of 
these  generations. 

In  connection  with  this,  room  should  be 
made  for  some  original  remarks  of  the  wri- 
ter upon  the  Pagan  element  in  our  modern 
poetry.  He  is  very  well  affected  tow^ards 
Platonism,  and  recognizes  it  historically  as 
"  the  chief  secondary  cause  of  the  diffusion 
of  Christianity,  doing  for  it  more  than  the 
favor  of  Constantine  could  ever  have  done." 
He  thus  affirms  for  Greek  religion  and 
Greek  philosophy  "  an  element  of  greatness 
and  truth."     Our  poets,  in  returning  to  its 


AUBREY  DE  VERE  ON  POETRY.       155 

life  and  thought,  seem  to  him  to  be  making 
a  return  to  the  spiritual  element  which  in 
the  revolutionary  ages  has  been  obscured 
and  too  often  lost.  Pie  speaks  in  this  as  a 
Catholic,  but  he  is  more  Christian  than 
Catholic,  if  it  may  be  permitted  to  say  so ; 
and  all  religious  writers  admit  and  lament 
the  inroad  of  skepticism  and  consequent 
materialism.  The  turn  he  gives  to  these 
facts  is  a  striking  one  :  — 

"  The  arts  of  the  Middle  Ages  soared 
above  Paganism :  the  imaginative  mind  of 
modern  times  stands  for  the  most  part  aloof 
from  it ;  but  it  often  stands  aloof  from 
Christianity  also.  Secularity  is  its  prevail- 
ing character,  while  even  in  Paganism  there 
is  a  spiritual  element.  We  may  not,  without 
a  risk  of  insincerity  and  presumption,  in- 
dulge in  either  an  exultation  or  a  regret 
higher  than  corresponds  with  our  low  posi- 
tion. Can  we  with  truth  say  that  the  por- 
tion of  our  modern  literature  which  reverts 
to  ancient  mythology  is  less  religious  than 
the  rest  ?  Is  it  not,  in  the  case  of  some  au- 
thors, the  only  portion  which  has  any  rela- 
tions, even  through  type  or  symbol,  with  re- 
ligious ideas  ?  Would  Dante,  would  even 
Milton,  have  found  more  to  sympathize  with 


156       AUBEEY  DE  VEEE  ON  POETRY. 

in  the  average  of  modern  literature  than  in 
Homer  or  in  Sophocles,  in  Wordsworth's 
Laodamia  or  Keats's  Hymn  to  Pan  ?  What 
proportion  of  our  late  poetry  is  Christian 
either  in  spirit  or  in  subject  —  nay,  in 
traditions  and  associations?  Admirable  as 
much  of  it  is,  it  is  not  for  its  spiritual  ten- 
dencies that  it  can  be  commended.  Com- 
monly it  shares  the  material  character  of  our 
age,  and  smells  of  the  earth ;  at  other  times, 
recoiling  from  the  sordid,  it  flies  into  the 
fantastic.  .  .  .  It  is  our  life  which  is  to  be 
blamed  ;  our  poetry  has  been  but  the  reflec- 
tion of  that  life." 

This  is  valuable,  not  only  for  its  sugges- 
tion, but  because  it  sums  up  and  speaks  out 
plainly  the  protest  which  is  implicit  in  all 
this  criticism.  The  aesthetic  lover  of  beauty, 
the  artist  who  is  satisfied  with  feats  of  poetic 
craft,  will  not  find  anything  to  his  liking  in 
Aubrey  de  Vere's  essays.  They  are  presided 
over  by  a  severe  Platonism  intellectually,  by 
an  exacting  and  all  -  including  Christianity 
when  the  subject  touches  upon  man's  life, 
and  they  will  prove  somewhat  difficult  read- 
ing, perhaps,  because  the  thought  continu- 
ally reverts  to  great  ideas,  to  that  doctrine 
of  life  which  the  author  seeks  for  in  the  jjoets, 


AUBREY  DE  VEEE  ON  FOETRY.       157 

and  prizes  as  the  substance  of  their  works. 
But  it  is  well,  in  poetic  days  like  these,  to 
be  brought  back  to  the  more  serious  muses 
which  inspired  the  great  ideal  works  o£  our 
literature,  and  to  converse  with  them  under 
the  guidance  of  such  a  spirit  as  fills  these 
essays  with  a  sense  of  the  continual  presence 
in  great  literature  of  the  higher  interests  of 
man,  his  life  on  earth,  and  his  spiritual  rela- 
tion to  the  universe.  These  essays  contain 
the  fruits  of  habitual  familiarity  with  poetry, 
the  convictions  of  a  lifetime  with  regard  to 
those  things  which  are  still  important  sub- 
jects of  thought  to  thoughtful  men ;  and 
there  is,  mingled  with  the  style,  the  sweet 
persuasiveness  of  a  refined  and  liberal  na- 
ture, which  is  only  too  well  aware  that  it 
must  plead  its  cause,  and  pleads  with 
strength  and  charm. 


ILLUSTRATIONS  OF  IDEALISM. 

I.    THE  PERGAMON   MARBLES. 

The  development  of  tlie  Greek  genius  in 
sculpture,  after  it  had  passed  its  first  ma- 
turity in  Phidias  and  his  immediate  succes- 
sors, presented  the  same  characteristic  signs 
shown  in  the  history  of  other  modes  of  artis- 
tic expression  in  other  nations.  A  reasoned 
conception  of  the  ends  and  means,  a  trained 
appreciation  of  form,  a  complete  mastery  of 
technique,  were  inherited  by  the  sculptors  of 
Pergamon.  The  purpose  being  defined  and 
the  tools  perfected,  no  originality  was  al- 
lowed them  except  in  style ;  and  conse- 
quently their  work,  like  the  last  dramas  'of 
Shakespeare,  or  the  creations  of  Browning 
or  Carlyle,  exhibits  an  excess  of  subject, 
an  effort  to  put  the  utmost  of  muscular 
action,  of  narrative  import,  of  allegorized 
truth,  into  their  marbles.  And  yet,  in  con- 
nection with  this  intensity,  as  it  is  called,  it 
cannot  fail  to  be  observed  that  their  sculp- 

158 


ILLUSTRATIONS  OF  IDEALISM.     159 

ture  (herein  touched  with  the  decadence) 
breathes  the  self-glorifying  spii'it  of  trium- 
phant skill,  rather  than  the  overmastering 
idealism  of  the  earlier  patriotic  and  religious 
motives.  In  their  pictorial  composition  and 
landscape  backgrounds,  also,  one  is  tempted 
to  discern  the  harmful  influence  of  that  so 
vaguely  known  school  of  painting  that  flour- 
ished in  the  preceding  period,  and  to  piece 
out  by  conjecture  our  fragmentary  concep- 
tions of  its  manner.  It  is  complained  that 
modern  sculpture  is  too  pictorial ;  almost  as 
soon  as  the  art  was  recovered  in  Italy  it  fell 
into  the  same  error,  particularly  in  relief 
work ;  but  in  Greece  the  profuse  use  of  color 
on  the  marble,  as  ground  and  also  for  direct 
decoration,  together  with  the  employment  of 
metals  and  jewels  as  additional  adornment, 
must  have  brought  the  two  arts  so  closely 
too:etlier  that  the  transference  of  modes 
of  treatment  was  inevitable.  The  striking- 
thing  is  that  painting,  then  as  now,  seems 
by  its  greater  compass  to  overpower  its  more 
hampered  rival. 

Besides  this  tendency  to  overtax  the  power 
of  expression  by  the  weight  of  subject,  and 
this  pride  in  mere  technique  in  close  associ- 
ation with  a  humiliating  imitation  of  a  dif- 


160      ILLUSTRATIONS  OF  IDEALISM. 

ferent  art,  these  Pergamon  sculptures  dis- 
play other  marks  of  being  essentially  quite 
modern.  Their  realism  is  especially  notice- 
able. The  Greeks  of  the  elder  time,  it  must 
be  acknowledged,  were  remarkably  fortu- 
nate in  that  their  realistic  spirit  fell  in  with 
an  actual  existence  which  itself  appealed 
to  the  imagination  in  many  ways.  In  the 
Athenian  prime  the  life  that  taught  Sopho- 
cles and  Agathon  was  heroic  or  idyllic,  and 
needed  hardly  a  touch  to  exalt  its  elements 
into  the  most  imaginative  idealism.  When 
Plato  could  not  write  a  dialogue  without 
making  a  drama,  nor  Aristophanes  compose 
a  comedy  without  breaking  into  the  sweetest 
lyric  song,  nor  Phidias  chisel  a  flying  fold 
except  for  eternity,  a  presence  was  upon  the 
earth  and  a  spirit  in  men  that  made  realism 
not  less  trustworthy  as  a  guide  to  sculptors 
than  is  the  "  Look  into  thy  heart  and  write  " 
as  a  maxim  for  poets  like  Sidney.  But 
when  the  barbarians  broke  in  from  the  north 
upon  Asia  Minor,  and  the  luxury  of  oriental 
manners  and  the  fantasies  of  oriental  mind 
stole  upon  the  old  order  and  changed  it,  to 
study  the  real  was  not  necessarily  to  achieve 
the  beautiful.  The  barbarians  chiseled  by 
the  Pergamon  sculptors  are  very  different 


ILLUSTRATIONS  OF  IDEALISM,      161 

from  those  that  once  adoniecl  the  Parthe- 
non :  they  are  fierce,  ugly,  portrait-like,  stud- 
ied from  the  life.  The  giants,  too,  by  the 
same  artists  are  not  even  altogether  human, 
as  in  the  older  reliefs,  but  many  are  mon- 
strous :  conglomerates  of  snaky  folds  and 
Titanic  limbs  and  ox  necks,  finny  wings, 
pointed  ears,  horns,  and  such  Egyptian  and 
Assyrian  confusions.  For  this  debasement 
of  the  type,  few  will  consider  the  wonderful 
finish,  the  minute  and  successful  imitation 
of  fur,  scale,  and  stuff,  a  compensation.  So, 
too,  the  representation  of  mortal  agony  is, 
in  these  works,  carried  to  an  extreme  of 
truthfulness  that  is  upon  the  verge  of  the 
revolting.  This  new  bent  of  realism  which, 
ceasing  to  select  from  the  beautiful  in  life, 
now  takes  these  three  directions,  —  toward 
the  portraiture  of  types  not  noble,  toward 
the  close  copying  of  accessories  not  impor- 
tant, and  toward  the  reproduction  of  shock- 
ing aspects  of  existence,  —  this  essential  dif- 
ference between  the  art  of  Athens  and  of 
Pergamon,  it  would  be  but  too  easy  to  par- 
allel in  more  than  one  province  of  our  own 
intellectual  life.  These  remarks,  although 
they  were  not  meant  to  point  such  a  moral, 
incidentally  illustrate  how  misleading  is  the 


162      ILLUSTRATIONS   OF  IDEALISM. 

the  word  "ancient"  when  applied  to  the 
Greeks.  Wherever  approached,  they  are  as 
level  to  our  own  times  in  thought  and  deed 
as  any  of  the  so-called  moderns  ;  and  though 
their  language,  in  its  former  dialect,  is  dead, 
its  golden  words  always  fall  upon  our  ears 
as  if  from  the  lips  of  some  wiser  contempo- 
rary. In  looking  on  these  recovered  marble 
fragments,  just  as  in  reading  the  Antigone 
or  Alcestis,  the  centuries  seem  meaningless. 

II.    A   GREEK   TRAIT   NOTICED   BY  DR.  WALD- 

STEIN. 

One  distinction  between  the  Greeks  and 
ourselves  may  be  expressed  by  saying  that 
our  culture  as  a  people  rests  upon  literature, 
on  the  printed  word,  while  that  of  the  Greeks 
based  itself  rather  upon  observation,  on  the 
thing  seen.  The  divergence  of  intellectual 
mood  thus  induced  between  ancient  and 
modern  is  profound,  and  affects  the  whole 
higher  life.  In  reflecting  upon  this  classical 
trait,  however,  something  is  to  be  guarded 
against.  It  is  well  known  that  the  illiter- 
ate, generally  speaking,  think  in  images, 
and  that  this  power  or  habit  of  visualization, 
sometimes  thought  to  be  characteristic  of  the 
poet,  be  it  observed,  usually  falls  into  disuse 


ILLUSTRATIONS  OF  IDEALISM.      163 

in  proportion  to  the  increase  and  continuity 
of  exclusively  literary  culture  in  the  individ- 
ual, until  the  point  is  reached  at  which  a 
man  thinks  without  having  a  single  image 
definitely  projected  upon  the  mind's  eye ; 
his  mental  processes  are,  in  fact,  as  colorless 
and  formless  as  algebraic  calculations.  Mr. 
Galton's  experiments  in  this  matter  are  still 
fresh  in  our  memories.  Now  it  is  not  to  be 
inferred  that  this  was  always  the  case,  nor 
indeed  that  the  intellect  of  highest  develop- 
ment may  not  in  the  past,  at  least,  have  ha- 
bitually thought  in  images,  as  the  unlettered 
do  to-day ;  and  in  Greece  it  appears  that  the 
picture  language  of  the  mind,  as  one  may 
call  it,  held  a  place  more  important  than 
with  us,  and  perhaps  equivalent  to  our  own 
idea  language.  The  Greek,  as  every  one 
knows,  peopled  the  earth  with  presiding  ge- 
niuses, of  more  or  less  exalted  rank,  from 
Oread  and  Naiad,  to  the  great  Zeus  of  Olym- 
pus. These  forms  we  call  imaginary,  and  to 
our  thought  they  are  always  tenuous ;  the 
point  to  be  remembered  is  that,  when  the 
Greek  spoke  of  Athene,  an  image  came  be- 
fore his  mind,  and  one  not  hypothetical  and 
consciously  symbolical,  like  Liberty  with  her 
cap,  but  definite,  real,  and  awful,  like  the 


164      ILLUSTRATIONS  OF  IDEALISM. 

statue  on  tlie  pediment  or  in  the  temple. 
The  Greek  mind  leaned  on  these  images  ars 
our  mind  does  on  the  alphabet  in  all  mental 
life ;  hence  the  poetry  and  the  art  of  the 
age  had  a  certain  ease  and  naturalness,  an 
intimacy  with  things  seen  by  the  eye,  not 
equaled  in  the  work  of  later  times,  except 
possibly  in  Italy.  Dr.  Waldstein  points  out 
that  the  most  striking  expression  of  this 
plastic  necessity,  inherent  in  Greek  think- 
ing, is  the  doctrine  of  Platonic  ideas.  To 
the  moderns,  however  tolerant  they  may  be, 
there  seems  always  a  childishness,  a  gro- 
tesque quality,  the  more  marked  because 
of  Plato's  splendid  and  rich  endowment,  in 
the  continual  insistence  in  his  philosophy  on 
the  "  ideas  "  of  the  table  and  the  flute, — the 
table  without  any  deflnite  number  of  legs, 
the  flute  without  any  particular  quality  of 
sound ;  and  the  case  is  not  much  helped, 
even  if  one  perceives,  as  Schopenhauer 
shows,  that  the  doctrine  is  essentially  ac- 
curate in  truth,  and  wholly  intelligible,  since 
it  is  merely  the  modern  statement  of  the  sub- 
jectivity of  time  and  space  put  conversely. 
Notwithstanding  these  admissions,  our  minds 
still  find  the  Platonic  ideas  awkward  to  deal 
with.     But  that  Plato,  at  the  end  of  his  ab- 


ILLUSTRATIONS  OF  IDEALISM.      165 

strusest  speculations,  and  at  the  threshold  of 
one  of  the  greatest  generalizations  of  the  hu- 
man intellect,  fell  back  upon  the  image-form- 
ing faculty,  and  insisted  on  particularizing 
the  universal  by  means  of  a  mystery  or  fic- 
tion of  thought,  is  a  crowning  proof  of  the 
pervasiveness  and  inner  mastery  of  the  plas- 
tic spirit  in  the  culture  of  his  civilization. 

This  trait  of  the  Greeks  has  been  dwelt 
on,  in  the  present  instance,  less  for  itself 
than  for  its  bearing  on  the  idealism  of  the 
art  of  Phidias,  of  which  the  marbles  of  the 
Parthenon  are  the  great  examples.  Of 
course  Dr.  Waldstein,  who  knows  the  value 
of  this  supreme  achievement  of  the  idealistic 
temperament  in  man,  is  himself  an  idealist, 
and  when  he  has  occasion  to  analyze  the 
monuments  treats  at  more  or  less  length  of 
the  theory  of  idealism.  He  distinguishes  at 
once  two  kinds  of  physical  representation, 
the  portrait  and  the  type,  and  affirms  an 
analogous  difference  in  representations  of 
the  spirit  that  animates  the  stone,  —  the 
man  as  he  is,  and  the  man  as  he  ought  to  be. 
He  observes,  too,  that  the  Greeks  were  fortu- 
nately supplied  with  subjects  of  sculpture  in 
which  both  the  physical  and  spiritual  perfec- 
tion of  man  were  proper  elements,  and,  in- 


166      ILLUSTRATIONS  OF  IDEALISM. 

deed,  requisite  ;  namely,  the  heroes  and  the 
gods.     The   higher   life  was   the  theme  of 
their  art  in  its  greatest  excellence,  not  as  a 
possible  but  as  an  actual  existence.     This  of 
itself  was  a  valuable  help  to  them,  for  cen- 
tres   of  imagination  were   thus   determined 
for  them  and  given  a  certain  external  valid- 
ity ;  whereas  among  the  moderns  art  is  felt 
to  be  in  its  essence  a  mode  of  subjective  cre- 
ation, having  no  reality  except  in  thought. 
The  resvilting  sense  of  uncertainty,  the  weak- 
ened   faith    in    such   emanations   of    man's 
brain,  almost  inevitable  for  the  contemporary 
poet  or  artist,  is  one  cause  of  the  recoil  of 
our  imagination  from  the  ideal,  and  of  the 
attraction  of    realism   for  our  writers,  and 
perhaps  of  our  content  with  a  literature  and 
art   that   will    have   fact   for   its   province. 
" Let  us  have  facts,"  is  the  cry ;  "of  truth 
—  that  is,  the  relation  of  facts  —  who  can 
be  certain?     Let  us  represent  men  as  ithey 
are ;   of  men  as  they  ought  to  be  who  has 
any  observation  ?  "     And  even  within  these 
limits  of  the  new  school  it  is  said,  further- 
more, that  attention  is  to  be  paid  to  the  in- 
dividual ;  not  to  man  as  he  is,   but  to  this 
man,  taken  at  random,  as  he  is.     The  type 
is  too  general   to   be  depicted,  too  far  re- 


ILLUSTRATIONS  OF  IDEALISM.      167 

moved  from  actual  seeing,  too  much  an  ab- 
straction of  the  mint].  It  is  plain  that  at 
the  root  of  the  difficulty  felt  by  the  realists 
who  theorize  in  this  way  lies  the  conviction 
that  the  further  the  literary  or  any  other 
representative  art  gets  from  the  special  fact, 
trait,  or  passion  in  its  particular  manifesta- 
tion, the  more  vague,  doubtful,  pale,  rubbed- 
out,  —  in  a  word,  the  more  generalized,  —  it 
becomes,  and  hence  loses  sharpness,  vigor, 
and  illusiveness.  But  with  the  Gi-eek  the 
case  was  clearly  quite  otherwise.  There  was 
no  loss  of  individualization  in  the  type, 
whether  of  physical  or  of  spiritual  perfec- 
tion. This  Theseus  or  that  Hermes  is  ideal ; 
both  are  generalized  from  men,  but  they 
suffer  no  loss  of  vitality  thereby.  The  ideal- 
ism of  Athens  did  not  fade  out  in  abstrac- 
tion, but  embodied  the  permanent  elements 
of  harmonious  beauty  in  body  and  spirit,  in 
forms  "  more  real  than  livino:  man."  The 
habit  of  thinking  in  images,  or  with  fixed 
associations  of  images,  with  general  notions, 
was  one  reason  for  this  success,  imdoubt- 
edly;  but  before  concluding  that  the  liter- 
ary and  rationalizing  culture  of  our  day  for- 
bids us  to  hope  for  a  similar  blending  of 
the  type  with  individuality,  let  us  remember 


168      ILLUSTRATIONS  OF  IDEALISM. 

that  as  with  Phidias,  so  with  Shakespeare : 
Hamlet  is  at  once  the  type  and  the  man. 
The  poet  born  cannot  turn  aside,  on  this 
hand,  into  science,  as  the  realists  do  ;  nor 
on  that  hand,  into  philosophy,  as  the  alle- 
Eforists  do.  To  him  that  ideal  art  alone  is 
possible  in  which  the  two  are  united  in  the 
expression  of  permanent  and  universal  truth 
through  selected  facts. 

Nevertheless,  it  may  be  urged,  the  Greeks 
passed  rapidly  from  the  idealistic  to  the  re- 
alistic stage.  And  in  connection  with  this 
one  observes  the  happiness  with  which  Dr. 
Waldstein  identifies  the  elements  of  likeness 
between  the  Greeks  and  the  moderns,  just 
as  he  opposes  their  differences  to  each  other. 
The  most  admirable  example  is  an  inquiry 
into  the  sesthetical  qualities  of  the  Hermes 
of  Praxiteles,  and  in  the  course  of  it  he  de- 
lineates the  characteristics  of  the  age  of 
Praxiteles,  and  parallels  them  with  the  traits 
of  the  time  just  subsequent  to  the  French 
Revolution.  In  doing  this  he  incidentally 
describes  the  common  spirit  in  Shelley, 
Musset,  and  other  representatives  of  an  art, 
not  of  the  noblest,  but  not  of  the  worst 
either,  of  the  interval  after  the  great  age, 
yet  before  the  marked  decadence.     It  may 


ILLUSTRATIONS  OF  IDEALISM.      169 

be  said  that  the  English  never  had  an  age 
of  the  Phidian  kind  ;  in  European  culture 
that  is  to  be  sought,  if  at  all,  in  mediaeval 
art.  The  Praxitelean  age,  however,  was  re- 
produced in  essence  in  the  first  generation 
of  our  romantic  period.  A  certain  pathos, 
felt  in  view  both  of  the  world  and  of  one's 
self,  is  perhaps  its  dominant  quality,  and 
with  it  go  a  sophistication,  a  self-conscious- 
ness, a  reflectiveness,  a  slight  yet  not  com- 
plete abstraction  of  the  spirit  from  the  ob- 
ject before  it,  illustrated  by  the  expression 
of  the  head  of  Hermes  in  relation  to  the 
infant  Dionysus  on  his  arm.  It  is  the  mood 
of  one  whose  spontaneous  joy  has  been  dis- 
turbed forever  by  thought.  In  such  woi^k 
one  sees  that  the  objective  character  of  art, 
as  it  was  in  Phidias,  is  yielding  to  a  new 
impulse  ;  that  the  hold  of  the  imagination 
on  the  divine  and  the  eternal  is  slowly  relax- 
ing. At  last,  idealism  went  out  in  Greece, 
and,  either  in  the  shape  of  the  portrait  stat- 
ues, or  of  such  sculptures  as  those  of  Per- 
gamon,  realism  came  in  to  be  the  be-all  and 
also  the  end-all  of  art. 

Why  was  it,  one  asks,  that  the  plastic  na- 
ture of  the  Greeks  did  not  preserve  them,  if 
the  image-making  faculty  did  in  fact  count 


170       ILLUSTRATIONS  OF  IDEALISM. 

SO  much  in  their  development?  How  did 
they  come  to  lose  the  ideal  forms  that  sprang* 
in  the  mind  of  Phidias  when  he  thought  of 
beauty  and  virtue?  One  cannot  say  that 
idealism  failed,  for  its  triumph  in  the  Par- 
thenon marbles  marks  the  highest  point  ever 
reached  by  the  human  imagination  in  embod- 
ying its  vision.  It  died  out,  and  one  says 
in  explanation  that  the  attention  given  to 
technique  at  last  led  to  a  disregard  of  the 
idea ;  or  that  the  mere  ability  to  reproduce 
details  exactly  was  a  temptation  to  apply 
art  to  deceptive  imitation  of  the  seen  instead 
of  to  an  illusive  expression  of  the  unseen  ; 
or  that  the  age  had  lost  the  great  ideas 
themselves,  the  perception  of  beauty  and 
virtue,  the  belief  in  them  and  honor  for 
them,  and  hence  necessarily  declined  upon 
the  things  of  this  world,  —  that  is,  upon 
what  is  seen  by  the  bodily  eye  rather  than 
in  the  realm  of  thought  and  spiritual  ifi- 
sight :  and  of  these  explanations  perhaps 
one  is  as  true  as  another,  for  they  ai-e  all 
descriptions,  from  different  standpoints,  of 
what  actually  occurred.  It  is  impossible, 
however,  that  in  view  of  this  history,  and  of 
the  similar  course  in  the  development  of 
medijEval  painting,  one  should  not  ask  him- 


ILLUSTRATIONS  OF  IDEALISM.     171 

self  whether  the  rise  and  defense  of  realism 
among  us  mean  that  literature  is  to  follow 
in  the  same  track,  and  die,  as  sculpture  and 
painting  died,  until  a  new  age  shall  set  the 
wheel  turning  again ;  for  if  the  history  of 
the  arts  teaches  anything,  it  is  that  the  ages 
of  idealism  are  the  ages  of  power,  and  those 
of  realism  the  premonition  and  stiffening  of 
death. 

III.    MR.  PATER   ON   IDEAL   ^STHETICISM. 

The  heart  of  Mr.  Pater's  Marius  lies 
in  his  thought  about  the  ideal,  and  it  is  in 
the  nature  of  all  such  thought  to  make  a 
peculiar  demand  upon  the  reader.  Its  wis- 
dom is  felt  to  be,  as  it  were,  sacerdotal,  and 
requires  a  conscious  preparation  of  mind  in 
him  who  would  know  of  it ;  its  vision  is 
supernal,  and  disclosed  only  when  some  spir- 
itual illumination  has  been  sent  before.  So 
runs  a  Platonic  doctrine  of  election  and 
grace  that  has  been  held  as  rigorously  in  lit- 
erature as  in  theology.  This  aristocracy  of 
idealism  —  its  exclusiveness,  its  jealousy  of 
any  intrusion  of  the  common  and  worldly 
within  the  company  it  keeps,  its  sense  of  a 
preciousness,  as  of  sacred  things,  within  it- 
self —  is  incorporate  in  every  fibre  of  Mr. 


172      ILLUSTRATIONS  OF  IDEALISM. 

Pater's  work ;  and  he   makes   the   demand 
natural  to  it,  not  only  implicitly  by  an  unre- 
laxing  use  of  such  aesthetic  and  intellectual 
elements  as  appeal  exclusively  to  the  subtlest 
faculties  of  appreciation  in  their  highest  de- 
velopment, but  explicitly  also  by  the  charac- 
ter of  his  hero.     Marius,  before  he  became 
an  Epicurean,  was  moulded  for  his  fate ;  his 
creator  demanded  an  exceptional  nature  for 
the  aesthetic  ideal  to  react  upon  in  a  noble 
way,  and  so  Marius  was  born  in  the  upland 
farm  among  the  fair  mountains  to  the  north 
of  Pisa,  and  was  possessed  from  bojdiood  of 
the  devout  seriousness,  the  mood  of  trustful 
waiting  for  the  god's  coming,  which  is  ex- 
acted   in    all  profound   idealism.     "  J^avete 
Unguis  !     With  the  lad  Marius  there  was  a 
devout    effort   to    complete  this   impressive 
outward  silence  by  that  inward  tacitness  of 
mind    esteemed    so    important   by  religious 
Romans  in  the  performance  of  their  sacre,d 
functions."     Marius    was  born   one   of    the 
choice  natures  in  whom  the  heavenly  powers 
are    well   pleased ;  and    emphasis   must   be 
oiven  to  this  circumstance  because  it  follows 
that   the   ideal  life  which  he  lived,  deeply 
meditated  though  it  is,  is  really  an  individ- 
ual one.     Marius  is  not  typical,  nor  even 


ILLUSTRATIONS  OF  IDEALISM.       173 

illustrative  in  any  broad  way  of  the  practice 
of  gesthetic  morals ;  and  yet,  since  he  is  not 
national,  nor  local,  nor  historic,  in  his  essen- 
tial self,  since  he  is  more  than  an  enlight- 
ened philosopher,  and  yet  less  than  the  en- 
lightened Christian,  since  his  personality 
approaches  the  elect  souls  of  other  ages, 
other  sentiments  and  devotions,  and  yet  is 
without  any  real  contact  with  them,  he  is 
typical  and  illustrative  perhaps  of  something 
that  might  be.  This  confusedness  of  impres- 
sion springs  from  the  fact  that  Mr.  Pater, 
while  he  imagines  in  Italy,  always  thinks  in 
London  ;  he  has  modernized  his  hero,  has 
Anirlicized  him,  indeed,  and  nevertheless  has 
not  really  taken  him  out  of  the  second  cen- 
tury. It  was  a  bold  thing  to  attempt.  It 
was  necessary  for  his  purposes  as  an  evange- 
list of  ideal  living,  and  perhaps  within  the 
range  of  moral  teaching  it  is  successful ;  but 
the  way  in  which  it  was  done  is  a  main  point 
of  interest. 

A  Koman  Epicurean,  one  suspects,  was 
not  unlike  the  proverbial  Italianated  Eng- 
lishman. The  native  incompatibility  be- 
tween the  distinctive  Roman  temperament 
and  the  light-hearted  gayety  of  Greek  sen- 
suousuess  was  similiar  to  that  between  the 


174      ILLUSTRATIONS  OF  IDEALISM. 

English  and  the  Italian  character  in  the 
later  times ;  the  perfection  of  Marius  by 
means  of  a  Greek  ideal  may  run  parallel 
with  English  culture  under  southern  influ- 
ences. There  was,  too,  in  Roman  character 
a  trait  or  two  which  brings  it  near  to  quali- 
ties that  lie  at  the  base  of  our  own  stock. 
Even  in  the  Italian  landscape  there  are 
Northern  notes  such  as  Mr.  Pater  mentions 
when  Marius,  in  his  walks  to  the  coast,  sees 
"  the  marsh  with  the  dwarf  roses  and  wild 
lavender,  the  abandoned  boat,  the  ruined 
floodgates,  the  flock  of  wild  birds."  We  are 
told,  also,  that  "  poetic  souls  in  old  Italy 
felt,  hardly  less  strongly  than  the  English, 
the  pleasures  of  winter,  of  the  hearth,  with 
the  very  dead  warm  in  its  generous  heat, 
keeping  the  young  myrtles  in  flower,  though 
the  hail  is  beating  hard  without."  This 
note  of  Marius's  home-life  and  the  love  he 
had  for  it,  with  his  2:»articular  regard  fpr 
"Domiduca,  the  goddess  who  watches  over 
one's  safe  coming  home,"  and  with  the  ideal 
of  maternity  that  grew  uji  in  his  memory 
of  home,  —  this  peculiarly  English  note  is 
struck  in  the  opening  and  is  dominant  at  the 
end.  Certain  other  characteristics  ally  this 
Etrurian    boy    with    that  nobler   strain    of 


ILLUSTRATIONS  OF  IDEALISM.      175 

Eno-lish  blood,  the  Puritan  strain  as  it  was 
in  Spenser.  His  instinctive  seriousness,  his 
scrupulosity  of  conscience,  his  inheritance  of 
a  certain  sombreness  from  the  stock  that 
adorned  the  Etruscan  funeral  urns,  his  at- 
tachment to  places  and  awe  of  some  of  them 
as  sacred  by  the  touch  of  a  divine  power, 
his  sense  of  invisible  enemies  about  his  path, 
his  rigorous  self -discipline  in  preparation  for 
certain  hereditary  sacred  offices,  a  deadly 
earnestness  at  times,  —  as  when  he  gazes  so 
fixedly  on  the  rigid  corpse  of  his  friend  Fla- 
vian, —  such  are  some  of  the  traits  that  de- 
fine his  natui'e  as  essentially  rather  North- 
ern than  Southern,  and  provide  a  ground  of 
special  sympathy  and  understanding  for  us. 
The  second  device  by  which  Marius  is 
modernized  is  by  giving  to  him  a  power 
which,  for  one  who  runs  as  he  reads,  makes 
the  character  incredible.  He  is  said  to  be 
affected  sometimes  in  a  way  the  opposite  of 
the  experience  which  many  have  who,  on 
seeing  a  new  place,  seem  to  have  been  there 
before  :  Marius  feels,  in  the  most  marked 
of  his  experiences,  something  that  shall  be, 
—  he  has  always  a  prescience.  Thus,  in 
the  cadence  of  Flavian's  verses  he  hears  the 
music  of  the  Latin  hymnology  ;  in  the  sight 


176       ILLUSTRATIONS  OF  IDEALISM. 

of  his  second  friend,  Cornelius,  who  displays 
and  puts  on  his  armor  of  a  Roman  knight 
in  the  dusty  sunshine  of  the  shuttered  coun- 
try-house, he  foresees  the  Christian  chiv- 
alry ;  in  the  faces  and  groups  of  the  worship- 
ers in  Cecilia's  house  he  discerns  the  serene 
light  and  streaming  joy  of  Giotto's  and  of 
Dante's  vision,  and  looks  on  the  Madonna 
and  the  Child  that  Raphael  first  painted. 
In  all  this  there  seems  an  unreality  ;  in 
the  Puritan  Roman,  the  Cyrenaic  Christian, 
there  is  a  sense  almost  of  conscious  artifice, 
as  if  one  were  being  befooled.  And  yet,  as 
for  those  Northern  notes  of  landscape,  cus- 
tom, and  character,  scholarship  can  give 
chapter  and  verse  for  them ;  and  as  for  the 
gift  of  prescience,  —  well,  if  it  were  impos- 
sible for  Marius  to  have  it,  in  a  sufficient 
measure  at  least,  then  the  theory  of  ideal 
livins:  which  he  held  to  was  at  fault.  And 
this  Marius,  so  constituted,  his  creator  plaqes 
in  an  Italy  over  which  the  romantic  desola- 
tion, which  we  know,  was  laying  its  charm  of 
dreamful  decay,  and  in  a  Rome  which,  then 
as  now,  was  the  huddled  deposit  of  religions. 
The  intellectual  conviction  on  which  Ma- 
rius conducted  his  life  was  simple  and  com- 
mon enough,  as  must  be  the  case  with  every 


ILLUSTRATIONS  OF  IDEALISM.      177 

theory  capable  of  being  made  a  principle  of 
living.  The  world  is  what  we  think  it,  and 
our  part  in  existence  is  the  fleeting  moment 
of  present  consciousness.  What  shall  be 
done  with  this  moment  ?  Economize  it,  said 
Marius,  in  dissent  from  the  Stoic  who  said, 
"  Contemn  it."  Economize  it ;  make  the 
most  of  the  phenomena  that  arise  in  it,  and 
see,  so  far  as  it  depends  on  you,  that  these 
phenomena,  both  of  sensation  and  idea,  as 
they  arise,  are  the  most  valuable  possible  to 
the  moment ;  and  so  your  experience  —  in 
other  words,  your  life  —  will  be  the  fullest 
and  most  refined.  Above  all,  do  not  forget 
the  main  thing  in  this  doctrine  of  economy, 
which  is  that  the  worth  of  experience  de- 
pends, not  on  what  it  is  at  the  moment  in  its 
detached  and  transitory  phase,  but  on  what 
it  will  prove  in  memory  when  it  takes  its 
place  permanently  and  in  relation  to  the 
whole  of  life.  In  such  a  scheme,  recejativity, 
the  most  alert  and  varied  powers  of  taking 
in  impressions,  is  the  one  aim  of  cultivation. 
Here,  too,  much  depended  on  the  nature  of 
Marius,  this  time  on  the  side  of  his  Southern 
endowment.  An  impressibility  through  sen- 
sation was  his  gift,  his  talent ;  and  especially 
he  was  susceptible  to  what  the  eye  observes : 


178      ILLUSTRATIONS  OF  IDEALISM. 

he  was  one  of  those  who  are  "  made  perfect 
by  the  love  of  visible  beauty."  This  is  the 
point  of  union  of  his  life  with  the  aesthetic 
ideal,  and  makes  the  story  of  it  a  path- 
way through  scenes  of  loveliness  not  unlike, 
in  a  certain  mild  beauty,  the  frescoes  on  an- 
cient walls.  The  narrative  is  pictorial,  al- 
most to  the  point  of  decoration,  and  moves 
always  with  an  outlook  on  some  fair  sight. 
From  the  landscape  of  the  villa  where  Ma- 
rius  was  born  —  among  those  delightful 
Etrurian  hills  whence  one  looks  to  the  mar- 
bled rifts  of  Carrara  gleaming  above  olive 
and  chestnut  slopes,  and  gazes  off  through 
the  purple  sea-valley  of  Venus's  Port,  the  no- 
blest gateway  of  the  descending  sun  —  to  the 
last  throttling  earthquake  morning,  a  beau- 
tiful visible  world  is  about  us,  and  exercises 
its  attractiveness  both  in  nature  and  in  hu- 
manity. The  one  end  of  Marius  was  to  ap- 
propriate all  this,  to  choose  the  best  of  sen- 
sation and  its  most  nearly  connected  emo- 
tions, and  to  live  in  that.  To  do  this  in- 
volves a  secondary  talent,  a  gift  of  insight, 
a  power  to  perceive  relative  values,  which 
in  reality  means  a  faculty  of  moral  discrim- 
ination ;  and  just  here  one  may  easily  fail 
to  see  whence  Marius  derived  this. 


ILLUSTRATIONS  OF  IDEALISM.      179 

Why  was  it,  for  example,  that  he,  Leing 
so  attached  to  sensation  and  the  emotions 
that  cling  closest  to  it,  rejected  voluptuous- 
ness, with  all  its  forms  of  beauty  and  joyful- 
ness,  as  a  thing  essentially  not  beautiful  nor 
joyful  ?  What  was  it  that  kept  him,  the 
comrade  of  Flavian,  who  represents  the  pa- 
gan surrender  to  this  life,  pure,  —  so  pure, 
indeed,  that  with  his  visionary  sense  he  fore- 
saw in  chastity  an  ideal  that  was  to  be,  and 
foreknew  its  coming  beauty  ?  A  mere  inter- 
preter of  character,  an  analyst,  would  say, 
that  Marius  obeyed  in  these  choices  his  own 
nature,  —  that  Puritan  nature  whose  com- 
pulsion is  always  strong.  He  venerated  his 
own  soul  and  cherished  its  early  instincts, 
and  this  was  his  salvation.  But  one  might 
also  give  another  explanation,  which  would 
seem  more  harmonious  with  the  purpose  of 
the  author ;  one  might  say  that  what  is  moral 
is  in  its  outward  manifestation  so  clothed 
with  beauty,  visible  beauty,  that  the  man  who 
looks  for  beauty  only,  the  noblest,  the  ideal 
beauty,  will  find  therewith  the  highest,  the 
ideal  good.  It  is  essential  to  such  a  seeker 
that  he  shall  look  with  his  own  eyes  and 
be  frank  with  himself ;  shall  "  look  straight 
out "   and  acknowledge  what  he   sees  ;  and 


180      ILLUSTRATIONS  OF  IDEALISM. 

this  Mariiis  does,  thereby  prefiguring  in  a 
way  and  piactically  making  that  "  return  to 
nature  "  which  is  the  continually  recurring 
necessity  of  all  sincerity.  If  virtue  does  in 
fact  wear  this  outward  loveliness  —  and  who 
would  deny  it  ?  —  why  may  not  the  lover  of 
beauty  have  truly  seen  the  new  and  spring- 
ing forms  of  goodness,  recognized  them,  and 
taken  their  promise  into  his  life  ?  In  other 
words,  was  not  that  prescience  of  Marius 
merely  a  power  of  clear  and  honest  seeing 
of  the  elements  of  beauty  and  ugliness  there 
before  him  ? 

That  this  is  Mr.  Pater's  view  of  the  mat- 
ter is  indicated  most  definitely  by  the  con- 
trast which  he  continually  insists  on  between 
Mai'cus  Aurelius  and  Marius,  and  which  he 
brings  out  clearly  in  the  attitude  of  these 
two  toward  the  gladiatorial  shows.  In  the 
amphitheatre  Marius  is  conscious  of  the  Em- 
peror, the  strenuous  Stoic,  as  "  eternally  his 
inferior  on  the  question  of  righteousness." 
The  young  E])icurean  has  a  "  decisive  con- 
science on  sight  "  which  is  indubitable,  — 
that  conscience  which,  in  its  condemnation  of 
the  great  sin  of  an  age,  is  the  touchstone  of 
the  select  few  in  it,  and  makes  them  on  the 
side  of  the  future  and  aware  of  its  excellence 


ILLUSTRATIONS  OF  IDEALISM.      181 

to  be,  when  "  not  to  have  been,  by  iustmctive 
election,  on  the  right  side  was  to  have  failed 
in  life."  Aurelius,  we  are  told,  made  the 
great  mistake  :  Vale,  anitna  infelicissima  ! 
is  the  last  word  of  our  author  to  him  on  the 
eve  of  the  persecutions.  And  the  reason  is, 
that  the  Stoic  was  truly  blind  ;  he  had  pal- 
tered with  his  senses  until  they  lied  to  him, 
or  spoke  not  at  all.  Marius  saw  the  de- 
formity of  the  evil,  and,  while  rejecting  it  as 
something  he  might  not  see  and  live,  chose 
the  good  by  its  beauty,  and  so  selected  in 
the  midst  of  that  Roman  corruption  the 
Christian  elements  in  whose  excellence  the 
Church  would  triumph  and  be  made  fair. 

There  may  be  some  surprise  in  perceiving 
in  the  evangel  of  aestheticism  a  morality  of 
this  height,  a  concentration  of  attention  on 
the  beauty  of  austerity,  an  exaltation  of  a 
noble  Puritanism  toward  which  the  Cyrenaic 
ideal  may  lead.  When  this  is  understood, 
however,  one  finds  it  natural  enough  that 
the  pervading  tone  of  this  history  of  an  ideal 
life  is  really  religious  ;  idealism,  w^hen  it  is 
living,  cannot  be  otherwise  than  essentially 
religious.  Nevertheless,  it  is  a  bold  thing 
to  put  the  question,  as  Mr.  Pater  implicitly 
does,  whether  an  attention  to  the  beautiful, 


182      ILLUSTRATIONS  OF  IDEALISM. 

to  visible  beauty,  may  not  only  be  equivalent 
to  moral  discrimination  and  a  safeguard  of 
virtue,  but  also  a  mode  of  solving  the  ulti- 
mate religious  questions  of  deity  and  man's 
relation  to  it.  Marius  does  arrive  at  an  in- 
timation, perhaps  a  faith,  that  a  protective 
divine  companionship  goes  beside  him,  and 
at  an  emotion  of  gratitude  to  that  unseen 
presence. 

Two  points  only,  in  this  wide  branch  of 
the  speculation,  can  be  dwelt  on  now.  He 
says  toward  the  end  that  he  thinks  he  has 
failed  in  love  ;  and  here  he  touches  on  one 
weakness  of  his  ideal,  for  it  is  only  by  love, 
as  he  perceives,  that  any  reconciliation  be- 
tween the  lover  of  beauty  and  the  multitu- 
dinous pitiful  pain  which  is  so  large  a  part 
of  the  objective  universe  can  be  obtained. 
The  second  weakness  is  perhaps  greater.  In 
his  ideal  there  is  both  doubt  and  isolation ; 
the  subjective  element  in  his  knowledge,  the 
exclusive  reliance  on  his  own  impressions, 
the  fact  that  in  metaphysical  belief  the 
world  is  only  his  world,  and  in  actual  living 
the  experience  is  individual,  —  all  this  holds 
in  it  a  basis  of  ultimate  incertitude.  True 
and  real  for  him  it  no  doubt  is,  but  is  that, 
indeed,  the  necessary  limit  of  knowledge  and 


ILLUSTRATIONS  OF  IDEALISM.     183 

life  ?  In  effect,  too,  his  creed  is  Protestant ; 
independently  of  the  necessary  element  of 
doubt  in  it,  it  has  the  isolating  force  inev- 
itable to  the  believer  who  will  accept  only 
the  results  of  his  own  examination  by  exer- 
cise of  private  judgment.  This  position  is 
unsatisfactory;  and  it  seems  to  allow  the 
rationality  of  that  principle  of  authority  by 
which  an  individual  life  obtains  correction 
for  its  idiosyncrasies,  cancels  the  personal 
error,  and  at  the  same  time  lets  in  upon  it- 
self the  flood  of  the  total  experience  of  hu- 
manity summed  up  and  defined  in  the  whole 
body  of  the  elect.  Though  stated  here  in 
terms  of  the  Stoical  philosophy,  this  is  the 
Catholic  conclusion.  Or,  if  Marius  does  not 
quite  assent  to  this,  he  does  accept  it  in  a 
half-hearted  way  as  an  hypothesis  which  is 
worth  making  since  it  reunites  him  to  man- 
kind. There  is,  it  may  be  observed,  a  ten- 
dency toward  Catholicism  throughout  the 
religious  speculation.  Another  note  of  it, 
for  example,  is  the  attraction  felt  by  Marius 
in  the  ritual  of  worship,  as  the  perfection  of 
that  ceremonialism  to  which,  in  his  boyish 
worship  of  the  old  gods,  he  was  devoutly 
trained. 

After  all,  at  the  end  one  still  states  the 


184      ILLUSTRATIONS  OF  IDEALISM. 

promises  of  this  jestlietic  ideal,  even  when 
working  on  so  unusual  a  nature  as  Marius's, 
interrogatively.  Marius's  life  does  not  set 
it  forth  with  convincing  power.  For  one 
thing,  it  is  not  a  vital  life,  but  a  painted 
one ;  and  there  is  an  inconsequence  in  the 
series  of  pictures,  —  they  do  not  seem  to  fol- 
low one  another  by  any  iron  necessity.  It 
would  be  foolish  to  complain  that  a  life 
avowedly  only  receptive  and  contemplative 
of  the  beautiful  is  inactive.  Marius  does 
nothing  except  at  the  end.  Yet,  within  such 
limits,  one  never  sees  how  beauty  affected 
Marius  or  developed  his  soul,  and  though  he 
is  said  to  have  got  much  from  companionship, 
one  sees  love  operant  in  him  very  seldom, 
and  then  it  is  a  very  silent  and  unexpressed 
love.  He  repeats  his  own  epitaph,  —  tristem 
neminem  fecit.,  —  and  it  was  true  ;  but  all 
his  life  seems  negative,  and  continually  one 
asks,  How  did  he  really  live  ?  and  gets  no 
answer.  His  whole  life  was  a  meditatio 
mortis,  —  that  is  all  that  is  told  us. 

A  sense  of  failure,  or  rather  of  incomplete- 
ness, oppresses  one  at  the  end  of  the  narra- 
tive. Even  granting  that  the  success  Ma- 
rius is  said  to  have  achieved  —  one  is  never 
quite  sure  that  he  did  —  by  that  exquisite 


ILLUSTRATIONS  OF  IDEALISM.      185 

appreciation  of  beauty  and  impassioned  con- 
templation of  its  ideal  forms,  was,  in  fact, 
his  ;  yet  of  what  worth  was  it,  —  what  did 
it  mean  to  either  God  or  man  ?  The  North- 
ern idealist,  the  Puritan,  cannot  dispense 
with  some  serviceableness  as  essential  to 
any  high  living.  One  should  not  push  the 
point  too  far,  however.  Independently  of 
all  that  has  been  said,  any  one  who  cares  to 
think  on  counsels  of  perfection  for  man's 
life  will  find  profound  and  original  thought 
about  the  ideal  elements  still  at  hand  in 
modern  days  for  use,  and  many  wise  reflec- 
tions, sown  in  this  history.  It  is  a  rare 
work,  and  not  carelessly  to  be  read.  Some 
exquisiteness  of  taste,  some  delight  in  schol- 
arship, some  knowledge  of  what  is  best 
worth  knowing  in  the  historic  expressions  of 
man's  aspiration,  and,  above  all,  that  "  in- 
ward tacitness  of  mind "  the  reader  must 
bring  to  its  perusal.  What  of  it?  Have 
we  not  the  highest  authority  for  casting  our 
pearls  where  Circe's  herd  cannot  come  ? 


REMARKS   ON  SHELLEY. 

I.     HIS   CAREER. 

The  natural  charm  by  which  Shelley  fas- 
cinated his  familiar  friends  lives  after  him, 
and  has  gathered  about  him  for  his  defense 
a  group  of  men  whose  affection  for  him 
seems  no  whit  lessened  because  they  never 
knew  him  face  to  face.  The  one  common 
characteristic  prominent  in  all  who  have 
written  of  him  with  sympathy,  however  mea- 
gre or  valuable  their  individual  contributions 
of  praise,  criticism,  or  information,  is  this 
sentiment  of  direct,  intimate,  intense  per- 
sonal loyalty  which  he  has  inspired  in  them 
to  a  degree  rare,  if  not  unparalleled,  in  lit- 
erary annals.  Under  the  impulse  of  this 
strong  love,  they  have  championed  his  cause, 
until  his  fame,  overshadowed  in  his  own 
generation  by  the  vigorous  worldliness  of 
Byron,  and  slightly  esteemed  by  nearly  all 
of  his  craft,  has  grown  world-wide.  With 
the  enthusiasts,  however,  who  have  aided  in 
brinfrino;  about   this    result,  admiration  for 

166 


I 


EEMARKS  ON  SHELLEY.  187 

Shelley's  work  is  a  secondary  thing ;  its  vir- 
tue is  blended  with  and  transfused  into  the 
nature  of  Shelley  himself,  who  is  the  centre 
of    their  worship.     To   reveal   the   fineness 
and    lustre  of   his    character,    his    essential 
worth  throughout  that  romantic  and   dark- 
ened career  of  thirty  years,  is   their  chief 
pleasure,  and  in  this,  too,  they  have  now  won 
some   success,  and   have   partially  reversed 
the  popular  estimate  of  the  poet  as  merely 
an    immoral    atheist ;    yet,    although    some 
amends  have  been  made  for  harsh  contem- 
porary criticism,  Shelley's  name  is  still  for 
orthodoxy  a  shibboleth  of  pious  terror  and 
of  insult  to  God.     It  is  still  too  early  to  de- 
cide whether  the  modification  of  the  harsh 
criticism  once   almost   universally  bestowed 
upon    Shelley   will   go  on   permanently,  or 
whether  it  is  not  in  some   measure   due  to 
peculiar  results  of  culture  in  our  own  time. 
Without  attempting  to  prejudge  this  ques- 
tion, especially  in    regard    to  poetic   fame, 
there  seems  to  be,  as  the  cause  passes  out  of 
the  hands  of  those  who  knew  Shelley  per- 
sonally into    the   guardianship  of   the  new 
generation,  a  tendency  toward  greater  unity 
of  judgment  in  regard  to  the  larger  phases 
of  his  character  and  conduct. 


188  REMARKS  ON  SHELLEY. 

Shelley,  as  Swinburne  said  of  William 
Blake,  was  born  into  the  church  of  rebels  ; 
he  was  born,  also,  gentle,  loving,  and  fear- 
less. The  dangers  to  which  such  a  natu- 
ral endowment  would  inevitably  expose  him 
were  aggravated  by  a  misguided  education, 
and  by  the  temper  of  that  feverish  and  ill- 
regulated  age  in  which  modern  reform  be- 
gan. He  was  in  early  years  first  of  all  a 
revolter;  he  would  do  only  what  seemed  to 
him  best,  and  in  the  way  which  seemed  to 
him  best ;  he  took  nothing  upon  authority, 
he  acknowledged  no  validity  in  the  customs 
and  beliefs  which  past  experience  had  be- 
queathed to  men ;  he  must  examine  every 
conclusion  anew,  and  accept  or  reject  it  by 
the  light  of  his  own  limited  thought  and  ob- 
servation ;  he  carried  the  Protestant  spirit 
to  its  ultimate  extreme  —  all  legal  and  in- 
tellectual results  embodied  in  institutions  or 
in  accepted  beliefs  must  show  cause  to  him 
why  they  should  exist.  He  was,  moreover, 
in  haste ;  he  could  not  rest  in  a  doubt,  he 
could  not  suspend  his  judgment,  he  could 
not  wait  for  fuller  knowledge.  Finding 
only  incomplete  or  incompetent  answers  to 
his  questioning,  he  leaped  to  the  conclusion 
that  there  was  no  answer.     Had   he   been 


REMARKS  ON  SHELLEY.  189 

contented  with  allowing  this  spirit  to  influ- 
ence only  his  own  private  creed  and  conduct, 
mischief  enough  was  sure  to  be  wrought  for 
him,  error  and  suffering  were  in  store  for 
him  in  no  common  degree.  But  he  was  not 
merely  building  an  ideal  of  life  and  formu- 
lating a  rule  of  living  for  himself ;  he  had, 
as  he  afterward  confessed,  a  passion  for  re- 
forming the  world.  He  was  early  in  print, 
and  aspired  to  teach  the  world  before  he 
was  well  out  of  his  teens,  —  took  in  his 
hands,  indeed,  the  regeneration  of  Ireland 
through  pamphlets,  and  public  eloquence, 
and  personal  agitation  and  supervision.  It 
is  easy  to  dismiss  this  as  the  foolish  conceit 
of  a  boy  of  talent  much  given  to  dreaming. 
It  is  easy,  too,  to  dismiss  his  exile  from  his 
home  and  his  expulsion  from  Oxford  as 
childish  obstinacy,  disobedience,  ingratitude, 
and  presumption  ;  but  if  there  was  anything 
of  these  faults  in  him  there  was  also  much 
more  made  evident  in  these  first  trials  of  his 
character :  there  was  the  capacity  for  sacri- 
fice, the  resolution  to  be  faithful  to  the  truth 
as  he  saw  it.  The  beginning  of  manhood 
found  him  in  the  full  sway  of  immature 
conviction,  and  already  suffering  the  penalty. 
It  is  not  necessary  to  follow  out  in  detail 


190  EEMABES  ON  SHELLEY. 

the  development  of  a  life  so  entered  upon. 
It  led  him  to  attack  Christianity  and  to  dis- 
regard the  law  of  marriage,  and  this  is  the 
sum  and  substance  of  his  offense.  Yet  no 
sign,  perhaps,  is  so  indicative  of  the  in- 
creased liberality  of  religion  in  our  time  as 
the  attempt  which  has  been  made  to  show 
that  Shelley  was  essentially  Christian,  an 
attempt  so  common  and  vigorous  that  Tre- 
lawney  felt  called  upon  to  protest  against 
it.  In  this  spirit  Mr.  Symonds  writes  from 
one  extreme :  "  It  is  certain  that  as  Chris- 
tianity passes  beyond  its  mediaeval  phase, 
and  casts  aside  the  husk  of  outworn  dogmas, 
it  will  more  and  more  approximate  to  Shel- 
ley's exposition.  Here,  and  here  only,  is  a 
vital  faith  adapted  to  the  conditions  of  mod- 
ern thought,  indestructible  because  essential, 
and  fitted  to  unite  instead  of  separating 
minds  of  divers  quality  " ;  and  Kev.  F.  W. 
Robertson,  from  the  other  extreme,  writes : 
"I  cannot  help  feeling  that  there  was  a 
spirit  in  poor  Shelley's  mind  which  might 
have  assimilated  with  the  spirit  of  his  Re- 
deemer, —  nay,  which  I  will  dare  to  say  was 
kindred  with  that  spirit,  if  only  his  Re- 
deemer had  been  differently  imaged  to  him. 
...  I  will  not  say  that  a  man  who  by  his 


REMAEKS  ON  SHELLEY.  191 

opposition  to  God  means  opposition  to  a  de- 
mon, to  whom  the  name  of  God  in  his  mind 
is  appended,  is  an  enemy  of  God ;  .  .  . 
change  the  name  and  I  will  bid  that  char- 
acter defiance  with  you !  "  A  candid  exami- 
nation must  show,  however,  that  Trelawney 
is  right ;  there  is  no  doubt  that  Shelley  re- 
jected altogether  what  is  properly  known  as 
Christianity,  in  youth  violently  and  with  ha- 
tred, while  in  later  years  he  came  to  care 
less  about  it.  At  the  same  time  it  is  to  be 
remembered  that  he  had  seen  Christianity 
only  in  those  forms  whose  most  prominent 
characteristic  is  defect  in  charity  and  love, 
which  Shelley  believed  to  be  the  central 
virtues.  Probably  he  never  dissociated  the 
Christian  God  from  the  Jewish  Jehovah, 
and  his  feeling  towards  him  is  well  illus- 
trated in  the  terrible  indictment  he  makes 
against  him  in  reference  to  Milton's  delinea- 
tion of  Satan  as  one  "  who,  in  the  cold  secu- 
rity of  undoubted  triumph,  inflicts  upon  his 
fallen  enemy  the  most  horrible  punishment, 
not  from  any  mistaken  hope  of  thereby  re- 
forming him,  but  with  the  avowed  purpose 
of  exasperating  him  to  deserve  new  tor- 
ments." It  is,  therefore,  impossible  to  deny 
Shelley's  atheis.ra  ;  the  most  that  can  be  con- 


192  REMAEKS  ON  SHELLEY. 

tended  for  is  that  In  natural  piety,  in  purity 
of  life  and  motive,  in  conscientious  and  un- 
selfish action,  Shelley  was  exceptionally  con- 
spicuous. 

It  is  here  that  the  second  charge  against 
Shelley  has  its  place.  How,  it  is  indignantly 
asked,  was  he  unselfish,  loving,  and  con- 
scientious, when  he  left  his  youthful  wife  to 
circumstances  which  resulted  in  her  suicide, 
and  transferred  his  devotion  to  another? 
Nothing  more  can  be  done  than  to  point  out 
the  fact  that  Shelley  acted  in  harmony  with 
his  convictions  of  social  duty  ;  that  the  first 
marriage  was  the  result  of  knight-errantry 
rather  than  affection,  and  had  become  des- 
titute of  any  pleasure  ;  that  Shelley  did  not 
desert  his  wife  in  such  a  way  as  to  make 
her  suicide  chargeable  to  him.  These  con- 
siderations do  not,  it  is  true,  relieve  him  of 
condemnation,  or  remove  the  really  great  de- 
fect in  his  moral  perception  of  the  responsi- 
bility which  rested  upon  him  in  consequence 
of  a  thoughtless  and  foolish  marriage.  Yet 
it  is  not  doubtful  that  in  his  life  he  atoned 
for  his  error,  if  suffering  is  atonement ;  from 
that  time  a  shadow  fell  upon  him  which 
never  was  removed.  It  is  hard  to  find  heart 
for  reproach  when  one,  whose  whole  gospel 


EEMARKS  ON  SHELLEY.  193 

was  love,  is  so  cruelly  entangled  in  the  un- 
foreseen consequences  of  his  acts  that  he 
seems  to  have  wrought  the  work  of  hatred. 

What,  then,  under  this  presentation  of 
the  case,  remains  to  be  said  for  that  ideal 
character  which  those  who  love  Shelley  be- 
lieve to  have  been  his  possession?  That, 
beginning  life  with  a  theory  which  left  every 
desire  and  impulse  free  course,  which  im- 
posed no  restrictions  except  those  of  his 
own  honor  and  self-respect,  which  acknow- 
ledged no  command  not  proceeding  from  his 
own  reason,  he  yet  served  the  truth  he  saw 
with  entire  loyalty  and  sincerity  of  heart ; 
that,  making  many  errors  throughout  a  dark- 
ened life,  he  did  not  strive  by  lightness  of 
heart  or  logical  sophistication  to  avoid  their 
penalties  of  misery  and  remorse,  but  kept 
them  in  memory  and  bore  his  burden  of  sor- 
row courageously ;  that  by  intense  thought 
and  bitter  experience  he  came  at  last  to 
find  the  laws  of  life  and  to  obey  them.  He 
found  how  impossible  it  is  for  the  individ- 
ual to  solve  the  problems  put  before  him,  so 
that  he  himself  grew  content  to  leave  many 
of  these  in  doubt ;  found  how  ignorant  it 
was  in  him  to  make  his  own  experience  the 
measure  of  the  conditions  of  general  human 


194  REMARKS  ON  SHELLEY. 

life,  and  attempt  to  reform  the  world's  mo- 
tives and  standards  by  reference  to  that 
experience  alone ;  found  how  little  the  indi- 
vidual counts  for  in  life,  so  that  the  youth, 
who  with  fervid  hope  took  up  the  regenera- 
tion of  a  whole  nation  in  confidence,  came  to 
doubt  whether  it  was  worth  while  for  him 
to  write  at  all,  and  rated  himself  far  below 
his  friend  Byron.  These  characteristics  are 
the  evidence  of  his  strength,  sincerity,  and 
rightness  of  purpose ;  and  through  these  he 
worked  out  an  ideal  of  life  and  rule  of  liv- 
ing, which  differed  much  from  those  of  his 
early  days.  No  ideal  intrinsically  more 
powerful  in  influence  or  more  exalted  in  vir- 
tue has  been  worked  out  by  men  who,  like 
himself,  found  the  old  familiar  standards 
rationally  inadequate  and  morally  weak. 
These  are  the  essential  elements  in  Shelley's 
career,  and  to  them  his  personal  qualities 
and  his  daily  life  give  form  and  color.  This', 
too,  is  the  work  of  a  man  framed  for  self- 
destruction,  against  whom  circumstances  did 
their  worst  throughout.  The  marvel  is,  not 
that  his  life  was  so  broken  in  private  happi- 
ness, and  his  public  work  so  unequal  in  the 
worth  of  its  results,  but,  taking  all  into  ac- 
count, that  he  saved  so  much  of  his  life  and 


REMARKS  ON  SHELLEY.  195 

work  through  his  perception  of  the  valuable 
objects  of  living,  and  his  clinging  to  them. 

This,  too,  was  the  result  of  the  imperfect 
years  of  preparation.  He  had  given  him 
only  the  traditional  thirty  years  which  be- 
long to  every  genius  for  trial  and  training 
before  the  finished  work  can  be  required. 
He  had  just  recognized  the  conditions  to 
which  he  must  conform,  and  was  only  ready 
to  begin  when  he  died. 

II.    HIS    ACQUAINTANCES. 

It  is  impossible  to  condense  Shelley's  Life 
in  a  clear  way.  One  turns  the  pages,  and 
owns  for  the  thousandth  time  the  fascination 
of  Shelley,  from  the  first  glimpse  of  the  boy, 
pressing  his  face  against  the  window-pane  to 
kiss  his  sister,  to  the  hot  July  afternoon 
when  he  made  his  last  embarkation,  and  the 
summer  storm  swept  the  gleaming  mountains 
from  his  sight ;  but  no  art  transmits  the 
spell,  and  the  story,  clasped  between  these 
periods,  must  be  left  in  its  integrity.  Shel- 
ley lived  in  solitude,  and  died  before  he  was 
thirty  years  old  ;  but  his  career  involved  such 
variety  of  scenes,  persons,  and  Incidents,  was 
so  thick -strewn  with  interesting  episodes, 
and  contained  so  many  perplexed  passages, 


196  BEMAEKS  ON  SUELLEY. 

that  it  is  a  study  by  itself,  and  requires 
for  its  mastery  an  acquaintance  witli  an  ex- 
tensive literature  of  its  own.  It  were  useless 
to  attempt  a  criticism,  or  to  describe  Shelley 
anew,  but  some  unstudied  remarks  upon  his 
fortunes  in  life  may  be  ventured  upon. 

Must  one  incur  the  charge  of  being  super- 
cilious and  aristocratic  if  he  acknowledges 
at  once  a  feeling,  after  reading  Shelley's  life, 
of  having  been  in  very  disagreeable  com- 
pany ?  Assuredly  no  one  can  rise  from  the 
perusal  with  a  heightened  respect  for  human 
nature,  apart  from  Shelley.  He  was  born  a 
gentleman ;  his  innate  courtesy  clothes  him 
with  attractiveness,  and  distinguishes  him 
among  his  associates  as  a  person  of  a  differ- 
ent kind  from  them,  in  his  actions  and  bear- 
ing ;  and  the  deference  which  Byron  showed 
to  him,  it  is  not  unlikely,  sprang  from  a 
perception  of  this  strain  of  breeding  in  him 
rather  than  from  appreciation  of  his  genius 
or  his  nature.  In  his  earliest  fellowship  with 
school  -  friends,  for  whom  he  had  a  kindly 
regard  at  Eton  and  after  they  went  down 
together  to  Oxford,  though  Hogg  plainly  ob- 
scures it,  there  is  a  gleam  here  and  there  of 
natural  and  equal  companionship ;  but  this 
morning  ray  soon  dies  out.     He  was,  after- 


BEMABES  ON  SHELLEY.  197 

wards,  almost  uniformly  unfortunate  in  his 
acquaintances.  His  life  was  truly  one  long 
and  sorrowful  disillusion ;  and  in  it  not  the 
least  part  was  the  discovery  of  how  he  had 
been  deceived  in  his  judgment  of  persons. 

Hogg  was  his  first  example.  Shelley  be- 
came familiar  with  him  at  Oxford,  and,  not 
content  with  having  him  for  a  bosom  friend, 
wished  to  make  him  his  brother-in-law.  At 
that  time  Shelley  was  in  the  first  crude  fer- 
ment of  his  intellectual  life,  eagerly  absorb- 
ing the  new  knowledge  which  came  to  him 
from  his  indiscriminate  reading,  and  disput- 
ing on  all  the  usual  topics  with  vehement 
and  unwearied  earnestness,  insatiable  curi- 
osity, and  the  delight  of  a  youth  who  has 
just  made  the  discovery  that  he  has  a  mind 
of  his  own.  His  thoughts  and  letters  were 
mostly  polemical;  ideal  elements  of  moral- 
ity were  growing  up  in  him,  and  radical 
views  of  conduct  getting  a  hold  in  his 
convictions.  He  was  willful,  precipitate, 
and  heedless  through  inexperience ;  he  was 
thrown  the  more  upon  himself,  and  given  a 
violent  turn  toward  rebellion,  to  which  he 
was  prone  enough,  by  his  expulsion  from 
Oxford,  and  the  senseless  attempt  of  his 
family  to  make  him  suppress  his  mental  and 


198  BEMABES  ON  SRELLEX. 

moral  life  by  denying  his  first  dear  conclu- 
sions. In  this  state,  partly  from  adventure 
and  restlessness,  perhaps,  but  also  from  a 
sense  of  obligation,  the  desire  to  spread  his 
gospel,  and  by  the  mere  favor  of  circum- 
stances, he  married  his  first  wife,  though  he 
knew  that  his  sympathies  were  more  engaged 
than  his  heart. 

At  Edinburgh,  whither  the  pair  had  gone, 
Hogg  joined  them,  and  with  him  they  re- 
turned to  York,  where  Shelley  left  his  wife 
in  his  friend's  care  during  a  brief  necessary 
absence.  Hogg,  who  appears  to  have  been 
not  so  pure  as  might  be  wished  in  his  uni- 
versity days,  tried  to  seduce  her ;  and  when 
Shelley  came  back  he  learned  the  facts.  He 
loved  Hogg ;  he  was  ashamed,  he  wrote,  to 
tell  him  how  much  he  loved  him ;  he  was 
grateful  to  him  for  having  stood  by  him  and 
shared  his  expulsion  from  the  college ;  and 
he  placed  the  most  extravagant  estimate 
upon  his  abilities.  What  followed  upon  the 
disclosure  Shelley  himself  tells  in  a  letter 
written  at  the  time  :  — 

"We  walked  to  the  fields  beyond  York. 
I  desired  to  know  fully  the  account  of  this 
affair.  I  heard  \tfroni  him^  and  I  believe  he 
was  sincere.     All  I  can  recollect  of  that  ter- 


EEMABKS  ON  SHELLEY.  199 

rible  day  was  that  I  pardoned  him,  —  fully, 
freely  pardoned  him  ;  that  I  would  still  be 
a  friend  to  him,  and  hoped  soon  to  convince 
him  how  lovely  virtue  was  ;  that  his  crime, 
not  himself,  was  the  object  of  my  detesta- 
tion ;  that  I  value  a  human  being  not  for 
what  it  has  been,  but  for  what  it  is ;  that  I 
hoped  the  time  would  come  when  he  would 
regard  his  horrible  error  with  as  much  dis- 
gust as  I  did.  He  said  little ;  he  was  pale, 
terror-struck,  remorseful." 

One  may  smile  at  this  episode,  if  he  be 
cynical,  and  has  left  youth  far  enough  be- 
hind ;  but  for  all  that,  there  is  something 
pathetic  in  these  sentences  of  boyish  good- 
ness, this  simple  belief  in  the  moral  princi- 
ples which  Shelley  had  found  in  his  first 
search,  and  to  which  he  had  given  the  alle- 
giance of  his  unworn  heart ;  and  in  this 
scene  of  forgiveness,  still  confused  with  the 
emotions  of  first  friendship  betrayed,  one 
perceives  the  Shelley  we  know,  though  he 
was  not  yet  out  of  his  teens.  Some  time 
elapsed  before  Shelley  realized  all  the  inci- 
dent meant ;  then  he  wrote,  "  I  leave  him  to 
his  fate  ;  "  and  when  they  met  again  in  Lon- 
don, the  old  footing  was  gone  forever. 

Godwin,  too,  affords  a  capital  example  of 


200  EEMAEKS  ON  SHELLEY. 

a  shattered  ideal.  He  was  the  Socrates  of  the 
young  poet,  and  Shelley,  who  derived  the 
main  articles  of  his  political  and  social  creed 
from  the  radical  philosopher's  great  book, 
was  already  adoring  him  as  one  in  the  pan- 
theon of  the  immortal  dead,  when  he  learned 
from  Southey  that  his  master  and  emanci- 
pator still  walked  the  earth.  He  sat  down 
at  once  and  wrote  a  characteristic  epistle,  in 
which  he  expressed  himself  with  the  enthu- 
siasm of  a  disciple  not  yet  twenty,  and  re- 
spectfully but  earnestly  besought  the  living 
friendship  and  advice  of  him  whom  he  re- 
garded as  the  light  of  the  new  age.  God- 
win was  interested,  and  long  and  frequent 
letters,  admirable  in  tone  upon  both  sides, 
passed  between  them.  The  elder  endeav- 
ored to  cheek  the  irrepressible  activity  and 
eager  plans  of  the  young  reformer,  who  had 
no  notion  of  waiting  until  he  should  grow 
old  before  setting  to  work  to  remake  society ; 
and  the  youth,  on  his  part,  exhibited  a  defer- 
ence and  willingness  to  be  guided  such  as 
he  never  showed  before  or  afterwards.  The 
first  modification  of  Shelley's  idea  of  God- 
win came  in  consequence  of  their  personal 
acquaintance,  as  was  natural ;  but  in  dis- 
covering that  Godwin  was  really  an  idiosyn- 


REMARKS  ON  SHELLEY.  201 

cratic  mortal,  as  well  as  an  illuminating  in- 
tellect, Shelley  did  not  yield  his  admiration 
for  the  sage.  One  can  still  see  the  un- 
bounded astonishment  of  the  poet,  which 
Mary  Godwin  describes,  when  she  told  him 
her  father  was  annoyed  by  his  addressing 
him  as  "  Mr."  instead  of  "  Esq.,"  in  direct- 
ing his  letters.  They  got  on  very  well  to- 
gether, however,  until  Shelley  ran  away  with 
Mary,  —  a  practical  exposition  of  Godwin's 
doctrines,  which  he,  having  now  grown  re- 
spectable and  socially  cautious,  did  not  at 
all  relish.  Shelley  had  before  this  aided 
Godwin  somewhat  in  financial  embarrass- 
ments. That  philosopher  was  always  in 
debt ;  and  the  young  disciple,  who,  though 
the  heir  to  a  great  property,  had  no  way  of 
realizing  anything  from  it  except  by  selling 
post-obit  bonds,  agreed  with  his  master  that 
philosophers  have  a  paramount  claim  on  any 
money  their  friends  might  own.  He  was 
willing  to  discharge  his  duty  by  getting 
Godwin  out  of  debt,  or  assisting  him  as  far 
as  he  could  in  the  matter.  When  he  re- 
turned to  England  with  Mary  he  found  that 
the  philosopher  would  not  see  or  forgive 
him,  and  positively  declined  to  correspond 
except  upon  the  subject  of  how  much  money 


202  REMARKS  ON  SHELLEY. 

Shelley  could  give  him.  Shelley  had  no 
thought  of  not  doing  his  own  duty,  because 
of  the  conduct  of  other  people ;  and  while 
he  felt  Godwin's  hardness  and  inconsistency, 
nevertheless  he  would  relieve  that  great  mind 
from  the  little  annoyances  consequent  on 
borrowing  money  without  providing  means 
of  repayment.  He,  however,  was  not  blind  ; 
and  what  he  learned  of  Godwin  in  the  course 
of  these  transactions  had  a  destroying  influ- 
ence upon  that  ideal  of  the  man  which  he 
had  formed  in  his  first  days  of  revolutionary 
hope.  In  the  second  year  of  his  life  with 
Mary  he  told  the  philosopher  what  he 
thought  of  the  whole  matter  in  a  letter  which 
one  may  be  excused  for  reading  with  pecu- 
liar satisfaction :  — 

"  It  has  perpetually  appeared  to  me  to 
have  been  your  especial  duty  to  see  that,  so 
far  as  mankind  value  your  good  opinion,  we 
were  dealt  justly  by,  and  that  a  young  fam« 
ily,  innocent  and  benevolent  and  united, 
should  not  be  confounded  with  prostitutes 
and  seducers.  My  astonishment,  and,  I  will 
confess,  when  I  have  been  treated  with  most 
harshness  and  cruelty  by  you,  my  indigna- 
tion,  has  been  extreme,  that,  knowing  as  you 
do   my   nature,    any    considerations    should 


EEMAEES  ON  SHELLEY.  203 

have  prevailed  on  3'ou  to  have  been  thus 
harsh  and  cruel.  I  lamented  also  over  my 
ruined  hopes  of  all  that  your  genius  once 
taught  me  to  expect  from  your  virtue,  when 
I  found  that  for  yourself,  your  family,  and 
your  creditors  you  would  submit  to  that 
communication  with  me  which  you  once  re- 
jected and  abhorred,  and  which  no  pity  for 
my  poverty  or  sufferings,  assumed  willingly 
for  you,  could  avail  to  extort.  Do  not  talk  of 
forgiveness  again  to  me,  for  my  blood  boils 
in  my  veins,  and  my  gall  rises  against  all 
that  bears  the  human  form,  when  I  think  of 
what  1,  their  benefactor  and  ardent  lover, 
have  endured  of  enmity  and  contempt  from 
you  and  from  all  mankind." 

The  v/riter  was  that  youth  of  twenty-three 
years,  of  whom  Godwin  remarks  that  he 
knew  "that  Shelley's  temper  was  occasion- 
ally fiery,  resentful,  and  indignant."  It  is 
true  that  it  was  so,  and  one  is  pleased  to 
find  upon  what  fit  occasions  it  broke  out. 
Shelley,  however,  had  undertaken  a  hopeless 
and  endless  task  in  trying  to  extricate  God- 
win from  debt,  and  he  spent  much  money, 
raised  at  a  great  sacrifice,  in  the  vain  at- 
tempt. What  he  thought  of  these  transac- 
tions, when  his  judgment  had  matured,  we 


204-  REMAEKS  ON  SHELLEY. 

know  from  another  delightfully  plain-spoken 
letter,  written  five  years  later,  in  answer  to 
renewed  importunities :  — 

"  I  have  given  you  the  amount  of  a  con- 
siderable fortune,  and  have  destituted  my- 
self, for  the  purpose  of  realizing  it,  of  nearly 
four  times  the  amount.  Except  for  the 
good-will  which  this  transaction  seems  to 
have  produced  between  you  and  me,  this 
money,  for  any  advantage  it  ever  conferred 
on  you,  might  as  well  have  been  thrown  into 
the  sea.  Had  I  kept  in  my  own  hands  this 
X4,000  or  X5,000,  and  administered  it  in 
trust  for  your  permanent  advantage,  I  should 
indeed  have  been  your  benefactor.  The 
error,  however,  was  greater  in  the  man  of 
mature  age,  extensive  experience,  and  pene- 
trating; intellect  than  in  the  crude  and  im- 
petuous  boy.  Such  an  error  is  seldom  com- 
mitted twice." 

But  long  before  this,  Shelley,  though  his 
estimate  of  Godwin's  powers,  in  common 
with  that  of  the  people  of  the  time,  remained 
extravagant,  had  found  out  the  difference 
between  the  author  of  Political  Justice  and 
Plato  and  Bacon. 

If  any  one  wonders  at  the  extent  to  which 
Shelley  let  himself  be  fleeced  by  the  philo- 


REMARKS  ON  SHELLEY.  205 

sophical  radical  of  Skinner  Street,  he  should 
reserve  some  astonishment  for  the  remainder 
of  the  shearers.  Shelle}'^,  it  is  to  be  remem- 
bered, was  never  in  possession  of  his  prop- 
erty, and  had  only  a  small  allowance  at  first, 
and  a  thousand  pounds  a  year  after  he  was 
twenty -four  years  old ;  he  was  extravagant 
in  his  generosity,  and  gave  money  with  a 
free  hand,  whenever  he  had  any,  to  the  poor 
about  him,  to  his  needy  friends,  and  to 
causes  of  one  kind  and  another  which  ex- 
cited in  him  his  passion  for  philanthropy. 
He  was,  consequently,  in  his  early  days, 
commonly  in  debt  for  his  own  expenses,  and 
often  in  danger  of  arrest  and  imprisonment. 
When  he  mentioned  his  days  of  poverty,  in 
that  letter  to  Godwin,  it  was  not  a  mere 
phrase ;  and  though  a  settlement  was  at  last 
made  which  provided  for  him  sufficiently, 
he  was  never  ahead  in  his  savings.  Under 
these  circumstances,  his  biography  at  times 
reminds  one  of  the  old  comedy,  with  its  mob 
of  parasites  and  legacy  -  hunters.  He  was 
simply  victimized  by  those  who  could  estab- 
lish any  claim  on  his  benevolence.  No  doubt 
he  gave  willingly,  with  all  his  heart,  to  Pea- 
cock and  Leigh  Hunt  and  the  rest,  as  he  did 
%o  Godwin,  and  thought  it  was  his  duty  as 


206  BEMABKS  ON  SHELLEY. 

well  as  his  pleasure  ;  but  his  generosity  does 
not  alter  the  fact  that  his  acquaintances 
were  very  dull  of  conscience  in  money  mat- 
ters. One  begins  to  relent  a  little  toward 
Hogg,  remembering  that  he  did  actually 
share  his  own  funds  with  Shelley  just  after 
the  expulsion  from  Oxford,  when  the  latter 
could  get  no  money,  owing  to  his  father's 
displeasure ;  and  for  Horace  Smith,  the 
banker,  who  sometimes  advanced  money  to 
Shelley,  and  not  too  much,  one  has  a  feeling 
of  amazed  respect. 

The  worst  misfortune  of  Shelley,  however, 
in  the  friends  he  made,  was  to  have  met  and 
married  Harriet  Westbrook.  The  circum- 
stances of  their  union  and  its  unlucky  course 
and  tragical  close  have  lately  been  for  the 
first  time  fully  set  forth.  The  marriage  on 
Shelley's  side  was  not  originally  one  of  love, 
but  it  became  one  of  affection.  For  two 
years  life  went  on  without  the  discovery  of 
anything  to  break  the  happiness  of  the  pair ; 
but  after  the  birth  of  their  first  child  trouble 
arose,  and  rapidly  culminated.  It  is  most 
likely  that  the  sister-in-law,  Eliza,  who  lived 
with  them,  was  the  source  of  the  original 
dissension  by  her  interference,  arbitrariness, 
and  control  of  Harriet ;  but,  as  Shelley  had 


BEMAEES  ON  SHELLEY.  207 

grown  in  mind  and  cliaracter,  the  difference 
between  him  and  his  wife  in  endowment  and 
in  taste  was  bound  to  make  itself  felt,  and 
to  put  an  end  to  the  unity  of  study  and 
spiiit  of  which  he  had  dreamed  ;  and  it  is 
clear  enough  that  she  had  tired  of  the  stud- 
ies  and  the  purposes  in  which  Shelley's  life 
consisted,  and  that  though  overborne  for  a 
time,  by  his  influence,  she  was  now  showing 
herself  worldly,  frivolous,  and  weak.  She 
had  married  the  heir  to  a  baronetcy  and  a 
fortune,  and  desired  to  profit  by  it.  In  one 
way  and  another  she  had  become  hard  and 
unyielding  toward  Shelley,  had  made  him 
thoroughly  miserable,  and,  in  the  earlier 
months  of  1814,  was  living  away  from  him ; 
and  he,  on  his  side,  as  late  as  May  in  that 
year,  as  appears  from  stanzas  now  first 
printed,  was  trjang  to  soften  her.  While 
affairs  were  in  this  condition  he  first  met 
Mary  Godwin,  and  he  fell  passionately  in 
love  with  her,  all  the  more  because  of  the 
long  strain  of  dejection  and  loneliness  ;  and 
in  addition  to  the  story  of  the  dissensions 
that  had  arisen  in  his  family,  and  the  dif- 
ference of  character  and  temperament  wdiich 
had  declared  itself  between  his  wife  and 
himself,  Shelley  is  said  to  have  told  Mary 


208  REMARKS  ON  SHELLEY. 

that  Harriet  had  been  unfaithful  to  him. 
If  he  did  not  tell  her  then,  he  did  after- 
wards. On  what  evidence  he  relied  we  do 
not  know;  nor  is  there  any  confirmatory 
proof  from  other  quarters  except  a  letter  of 
Godwin's  written  after  Harriet's  suicide,  in 
which  he  states  the  same  fact  as  coming 
from  unquestionable  authority  unconnected 
with  Shelley.  Not  long  before  his  death 
Shelley  renewed  the  charge,  though  in  a 
veiled  and  inferential  way,  in  a  letter  to 
Southey,  in  which  he  defends  himself  for  his 
conduct  in  this  matter,  declares  his  inno- 
cence of  any  harm  done  or  intended,  refuses 
to  be  held  responsible  for  the  suicide  of  Har- 
riet, and  practically  asserts  that  he  had 
grounds  for  divorce,  had  he  chosen  to  free 
himself  in  that  way.  There  is  no  need  to 
prove  that  Shelley  was  right  in  his  belief  of 
his  wife's  infidelity  ;  but  if  it  be  thought 
that  Shelley  did  in  truth  believe  her  guilty, 
that  has  much  to  do  with  our  estimate  of 
his  action.  He  was  twenty-two  years  old, 
or  nearly  that,  and  he  held  radical  views 
as  to  the  permanence  and  sacredness  of  the 
marriage  bond,  as  also  did  Mary,  who  in- 
herited them  from  her  mother.  Their  de- 
Qisiou  to  unite  their  lives,  under  these  cir- 


REMARKS  ON  SHELLEY.  209 

cum  stances,  was  a  practical  admission  that 
Shelley's  home  was  in  fact  broken  up,  and 
that  he  was  free  to  offer,  and  Mary  to  accept, 
not  legal  union,  but  a  common  home,  with 
the  expectation  and  purpose  of  complete 
devotion  one  to  the  other,  in  a  pure  spirit 
and  for  the  ordinary  ends  of  marriage. 

Shelley  did  not  proceed  secretly.  He  sum- 
moned Harriet,  who  had  not  thought  of  such 
serious  results  of  her  action,  to  London,  and 
told  her  what  he  was  going  to  do.  She  did 
not  consent  to  the  separation,  nor  does  she 
seem  to  have  regarded  it  as  final.  Shelley 
had  a  settlement  made  for  her  by  the  law- 
yers, provided  credit  for  her,  and  two  weeks 
after  the  interview  left  England  with  Mary. 
He  wrote  to  Harriet  on  the  journey,  assured 
her  of  his  affection  and  his  care  for  her,  and 
indulged  a  plan  that  she  should  live  near 
them,  which  is,  perhaps,  the  most  surprising 
instance  of  Shelley's  purity  of  mind,  and  of 
the  unworldliness  or  unreality,  as  one  chooses 
to  call  it,  of  his  conception  of  how  human 
life  might  be  lived.  On  his  return  he  saw 
her,  and  agreed  to  leave  the  children  with 
her  ;  and  when  his  allowance  was  fixed  at  a 
thousand  pounds,  he  gave  orders  to  honor 
her  drafts  for  two  hundred  pounds  annually. 


210  REMARKS  ON  SHELLEY. 

She  had  an  equal  amount  from  her  own 
family,  which  had  been  paid  since  the  be- 
ginning of  their  married  life.  When  Shel- 
ley left  England  the  second  time,  she  was 
thus  provided  for,  one  would  think,  suffi- 
ciently. On  his  return  he  lost  sight  of  her, 
and  was  anxiously  inquiring  for  her,  when 
the  news  of  her  suicide  reached  him.  She 
had  put  the  children,  of  whom  the  eldest 
was  three  years  old,  out  to  board,  at  a  time 
when  he  was  ill ;  she  had  not  been  permit- 
ted to  see  her  father  ;  but  the  circumstances 
immediately  surrounding  her  death  are  not 
known.  Shelley,  though  he  bore  his  share  of 
natural  sorrow  for  the  death  of  one  to  whom 
he  had  been  tenderly  attached,  did  not  hold 
himself  guilty  of  any  wrong. 

It  is  no  wonder  that  in  the  last  few  years 
of  his  life  Shelley  would  not  talk  of  his 
earlier  days,  and  had  a  kind  of  shame  in  re- 
membering in  what  ruin  his  hopes  and  pur- 
poses and  the  enthusiasm  of  his  youth  had 
fallen ;  he  felt  it  as  an  indignity  to  the 
nobleness  of  spirit  which,  in  spite  of  all  his 
failures,  he  knew  had  been  his  throughout. 
As  we  see  those  years,  it  is  only  for  himself 
that  we  prize  them ;  and  it  is  a  pleasure  to 
be  enabled  to  look  on  them  free  from  that 


BEMABKS  ON  SUELLEY.  211 

saddening  retrospect  of  his  own  mind,  and 
observe  liow  natural  and  simple  he  really 
was.  No  one  has  ever  had  the  days  of  his 
youth  so  laid  ojDen  to  the  common  gaze,  and 
this  is  one  charm  of  his  personality,  that  we 
know  him  as  a  brother  or  a  friend.  The 
pages  afford  many  happy  anecdotes  ;  but 
one  -can  linger  here  only  to  mark  the  con- 
stant playfulness  of  Shelley,  which  was  a 
bright  element  in  his  earlier  career  and  not 
altogether  absent  in  his  Italian  life.  The 
passion  for  floating  paper -boats,  which  he 
indulged  unweariedly,  is  well  known  ;  but 
at  all  times  he  was  ready  for  sport,  and 
could  even  trifle  with  his  dearest  plans,  as 
in  the  flotilla  of  bottles  and  aerial  navy  of 
fire-balloons,  all  loaded  with  revolutionary 
pamphlets,  which  he  sent  forth  on  the  Dev- 
onshire coast.  His  running  about  the  little 
garden,  hand  in  hand  with  Harriet ;  his  im- 
personating fabulous  monsters  with  Leigh 
Hunt's  children,  who  begged  him  "  not  to  do 
the  horn ;  "  and  his  favorite  sport  with  his 
little  temporarily  adopted  Marlow  girl,  of 
placing  her  on  the  dining-table,  and  rush- 
ing with  it  across  the  long  room,  are  in- 
stances that  readily  recur  to  mind,  and 
illustrate  the  gayety  and  high  spirits  which 


212  REMARKS  ON  SHELLEY. 

really  belonged  to  him,  and  which  perhaps 
the  Serchio  last  knew  when  it  bore  him  and 
his  boat  on  his  summer-day  voyages.  This 
side  of  his  nature  ought  to  be  remembered, 
as  well  as  that  "  occasionally  fiery,  resentful, 
and  indignant "  quality  which  Godwin  ob- 
served, and  the  intense  and  restless  practi- 
cality of  the  impatient  reformer,  when  •  one 
thinks  of  Shelley  (as  he  has  been  too  often 
represented)  as  only  a  morbid,  sensitive, 
idealizing  poet,  of  a  rather  feminine  spirit. 
That  portrait  of  him  is  untruthful,  for  he 
was  of  a  most  masculine,  active,  and  natu- 
rally joyful  nature. 

After  he  left  England  for  the  last  time, 
and  took  up  his  abode  in  Italy,  principally, 
it  would  seem,  because  of  the  social  re- 
proach and  public  stigma  under  which  he 
lived,  and  by  which  he  felt  deeply  wronged, 
he  was  not  really  much  more  fortunate  in 
his  company.  The  immediate  reason  for 
the  journey  was  to  take  Byron's  natural 
daughter,  Allegra,  to  her  father  at  Venice  ; 
the  mother.  Miss  Clairmont,  went  with  them, 
and,  as  it  turned  out,  continued  to  be  a 
member  of  Shelley's  family,  as  she  had  been 
since  his  union  with  Mary.  It  is  now  known 
that  the  Shelleys  were  ignorant  of  the  lia- 


EEMABKS  ON  SHELLEY.  213 

ison,  both  when  it  began  in  London,  and 
afterward  when  they  first  met  Byron  at 
Geneva  ;  but  Shelley  had  a  warm  affection 
for  Miss  Clairmont,  whose  friendlessness 
appealed  to  his  sympathy,  and  he  spent 
much  time  in  Italy  in  trying  to  make  Byron 
do  his  duty  toward  Allegra,  and  to  soften 
the  ill-nature  of  her  parents  toward  each 
other.  Byron's  conduct  in  this  matter  was 
a  powerful  element  in  generating  in  Shelley 
that  thorough  contempt  he  expressed  for  the 
former  as  a  man.  But  though  Shelley's 
most  winning  qualities  are  to  be  observed, 
and  his  tact  was  conspicuously  called  forth 
by  their  negotiations  in  regard  to  the  child, 
yet  the  connection  with  Miss  Clairmont  was 
unfortunate.  That  it  repeatedly  drew  scan- 
dal upon  him  was  a  minor  matter ;  it  was  of 
more  consequence  that  in  his  family  she  was 
a  disturbing  element,  and  Mary,  who  had 
disliked  to  have  her  as  an  inmate  almost 
from  the  first,  finally  insisted  on  her  with- 
drawal, but  not  until  frequent  disagreements 
had  sadly  marred  the  peace  of  Shelley's 
home.  Mary,  indeed,  was  not  perfect,  any 
more  than  other  very  young  wives ;  and  by 
her  jealousies,  and  yet  more,  it  seems,  by 
her  attempts  to  make  Shelley  conform  to  the 


214  EEMAEES  ON  SHELLEY. 

world,  especially  in  the  last  year  or  two,  she 
tried  and  harassed  him ;  and  so  it  came 
about  that  his  love  took  the  form  of  tender- 
ness for  her  welfare  and  feelings,  and  often 
of  despondency  for  himself.  Miss  Clair- 
mont  was  a  source  of  continual  trouble  for 
him  in  many  ways  :  she  was  of  an  unhappy 
temperament  and  hard  to  live  with  ;  but  with 
his  long-enduring  and  charitable  disposition, 
and  his  extraordinary  tenacity  in  attachment, 
and  perfect  readiness  to  admit  the  least  ob- 
ligation upon  him,  proceeding  from  any  one 
in  trouble,  he  never  wavered  in  his  devotion 
to  her  interests  and  care  for  her  happiness. 
It  is  a  curious  fact  that  Miss  Clairmont, 
who  lived  to  be  very  old,  manipulated  the 
written  records  of  this  portion  of  her  life, 
so  that  her  evidence  is  of  very  questionable 
worth,  though  better,  one  hopes,  than  that 
of  her  mother,  the  second  Mrs.  Godwin, 
whose  lying  about  the  Shelleys  was  of  the 
most  wholesale  and  conscienceless  kind. 

As  with  Miss  Clairmont,  so  in  a  less  de- 
gree with  others  of  the  Italian  circle.  But 
enough  has  been  said  of  the  character  of  the 
people  whom  Shelley  knew.  It  cannot  be 
that  they  cut  so  poor  a  figure  because  of 
Shelley's  presence,  hard  as  the  contrast  of 


REMARKS  ON  SHELLEY.  215 

common  human  nature  must  be  with  him. 
It  is  observable,  and  it  is  in  some  sort  a  test, 
that  he  did  not  overvalue  them.  Hogg,  Pea- 
cock, and  Medwin  were  all  deceived,  if  they 
thought  he  trusted  them  or  held  them  closer 
than  mere  friendly  acquaintances ;  there  is 
no  evidence  that  he  felt  for  Williams  or 
Trelawney  any  more  than  an  affectionate 
good  will ;  toward  Leigh  Hunt  he  had  the 
kindest  feeling  of  gratitude  and  of  respect, 
and  for  Gisborne  and  Reveley  a  warm  cor- 
diality, but  nothing  more.  Mary  he  loved, 
though  with  full  knowledge  of  her  weak- 
nesses, in  a  manly  way  ;  for  Miss  Clairmont 
he  had  a  true  affection  ;  and  he  recognized 
poetically  a  womanly  attractiveness  in  Mrs. 
Williams,  who  seems  to  have  represented  to 
him  the  spirit  of  restfulness  and  peace,  in 
the  last  months  of  his  life.  But  at  the  end, 
his  errors  respecting  men  and  things  being 
swept  away,  his  ideals  removed  into  the 
eternal  world,  and  his  disillusion  complete, 
the  most  abiding  impression  is  of  the  loneli- 
ness in  which  he  found  himself  ;  and  remem- 
bering this,  one  forgets  the  companions  he 
had  upon  his  journey,  and  fastens  attention 
more  closely  upon  the  man  through  whose 
genius  that  journey  has  become  one  of  un- 
dying memory. 


216  REMARKS  ON  SHELLEY. 

There  Is  no  thought  of  eulogizing  him  in 
saying  that  he  represents  the  ideal  of  per- 
sonal and  social  aspiration,  of  the  love  of 
beauty  and  of  virtue  equally,  and  of  the  hope 
of  eradicating  misery  from  the  world  ;  hence 
springs  in  large  measure  his  hold  on  young 
hearts,  on  those  who  value  the  spirit  above 
all  else  and  do  not  confine  their  recognition 
of  it  within  too  narrow  bounds,  and  on  all 
who  are  believers  in  the  reform  of  the  world 
by  human  agencies.  He  represents  this 
ideal  of  aspiration  in  its  most  impassioned 
form ;  and  in  his  life  one  reads  the  saddest 
history  of  disillusion.  It  is  because,  in  the 
course  of  this,  he  abated  no  whit  of  his  life- 
long hope,  did  not  change  his  practice  of 
virtue,  and  never  yielded  his  perfect  faith  in 
the  supreme  power  of  love,  both  in  human 
life  and  in  the  universe,  that  his  name  has 
become  above  all  price  to  those  over  whom 
his  influence  extends.  It  is,  perhaps,  more 
as  a  man  than  as  a  poet  merely  that  he  is 
beloved  ;  the  shadows  upon  his  reputation, 
as  one  approaches  nearer,  are  burnt  away  in 
light ;  and  he  is  the  more  honored,  the  more 
he  is  known.  For  it  would  be  wrong  to 
close  even  these  informal  remarks  without 
expressing  dissent  from  the  assumption  that 


REMARKS  ON  SHELLEY.  217 

Shelley's  intellectual  and  moral  life  was  one 
long  mistake.  Disillusion  it  was,  and  the 
nature  of  it  has  been  indicated  by  the  single 
point  of  his  acquaintances  ;  but  a  life  of  dis- 
illusion and  one  of  mere  mistake  are  not 
to  be  confounded  together.  Better  fortune 
cannot  be  asked  for  a  youth  than  that  he 
should  conceive  life  nobly,  and,  in  finding 
wherein  it  falls  short,  should  yet  not  fall 
short  himself  of  his  ideal  beyond  what  may 
be  forgiven  to  human  frailty.  Shelley's 
misconceptions  were  the  conditions  of  his 
living  the  ideal  life  at  all,  and  differed  from 
those  of  other  youths  in  face  of  an  untried 
world  only  by  their  moral  elevation,  passion, 
and  essential  nobleness  ;  he  matured  as  other 
men  do  by  time  and  growth  and  experience, 
and  he  suffered  much  by  the  peculiar  cir- 
cumstances of  his  fate ;  but  in  the  issue  the 
substance  of  error  in  his  life  was  less  than 
it  seems.  Shelley,  at  least,  never  admitted 
he  had  been  wrong  in  the  essential  doctrines 
of  his  creed  and  the  motives  of  his  acts, 
though  he  had  been  deceived  in  regard  to 
human  nature  and  what  was  possible  to  it 
in  society. 


218  REMARKS  ON  SHELLEY. 

III.    HIS   ITALIAN   LETTERS. 

The  prose  work  of  Shelley  has  remained 
in  the  obscurity  which  it  once  shared  with 
his  poetry.  The  formal  essays,  which  con- 
cern the  transitory  affairs  of  the  world  or 
themes  of  thought  remote  through  their 
generality,  are  valued,  even  by  admirers 
of  Shelley,  mainly  as  media  of  his  spirit ; 
the  familiar  letters,  scattered  in  old  books, 
or  collected  only  in  a  costly  edition,  and  de- 
prived of  literary  effectiveness  because  those 
of  high  and  enduring  interest  have  never 
been  selected  and  massed  until  recently,  have 
escaped  any  wide  public  attention  ;  even  the 
translations  have  been  neglected.  All  this 
really  large  body  of  prose,  however  exalted 
by  its  informing  enthusiasm,  however  exqui- 
site in  language,  and  melodious,  lies  outside 
the  open  pathways  of  literature.  It  is  this 
fact  which  gave  the  element  of  surprise  to 
what  Mr.  Arnold  called  his  doubt  "  whether 
Shelley's  delightful  Essays  and  Letters, 
which  deserve  to  be  far  more  read  than  they 
are  now,  will  not  resist  the  wear  and  tear  of 
time  better,  and  finally  come  to  stand  higher, 
than  his  poetry,"  —  a  judgment  which  well 
deserved  Dr.  Garnett's  quiet  rejoinder  that 


BEMARKS  ON  SHELLEY.  219 

"  this  deliverance  will  be  weighed  by  those 
to  whose  lot  it  may  fall  to  determine  Mr. 
Arnold's  own  place  as  a  critic."  Dr.  Gar- 
nett  adds  that,  in  an  age  when  all  letters 
approximate  to  the  ideal  set  by  men  of  busi- 
ness, Shelley's  alone,  among  those  of  his 
time,  rank  with  Gray's,  Pope's,  Cowper's,  or 
Walpole's  in  possessing  a  certain  classical 
impress  similar  to  that  of  deliberate  artistic 
work ;  and,  secondly,  that  they  exhibit  the 
mind  of  the  poet  as  clearly  as  Marlborough's 
do  the  mind  of  the  general,  or  Macaulay's 
the  mind  of  the  man  of  letters.  Their  two 
prime  qualities  are  beauty  of  form  and  trans- 
parency. 

The  sense  of  form  has  usually  been  denied 
to  SheUey,  and  if  by  it  is  meant  the  purely 
critical  impulse  to  remodel,  revise,  and  polish 
for  the  sake  of  that  finish  which  the  schools 
prize,  Shelley  neither  possessed  it  nor  sought 
for  it  with  any  strong  desire,  but  rather  re- 
jected it  as  dangerously  submitting  the  mind 
to  system,  against  which  he  was  prejudiced. 
But  if  by  the  sense  of  form  is  meant  the  in- 
stinct for  proportion,  for  regulated  combi- 
nation, for  natural  development  of  sensation 
into  idea,  idea  into  passion,  so  that  the  poem 
issues  in  a  single  harmony  in  the  mind  and 


220  REMARKS  ON  SHELLEY. 

heart ;  if,  in  other  words,  by  that  loose 
phrase  is  meant,  not  the  corrective  power  of 
the  critical,  but  the  shaping  power  of  the 
creative  faculty  working  out  ideal  beauty 
directly,  then  both  in  his  brief  and  in  much 
of  his  longer  poems  Shelley  was  singularly 
distinguished  by  it.  This  spontaneous  beauty 
of  form,  if  we  may  so  phrase  it,  is  the  only 
species  that  is  found  in  these  letters :  fitness 
of  words,  sweetness  of  cadence,  modulation 
of  feeling  in  immediate  response  to  thought 
and  image,  all  conspiring  to  make  up  per- 
fection of  utterance,  are  continually  present, 
but  not  through  erasure  and  elaboration. 
Shelley's  self-training  in  literature,  almost 
unrivaled  as  an  apprenticeship  in  its  length 
and  continuity,'  more  comprehensive,  pro- 
found, and  ardent  than  Pope's,  more  vital 
than  Milton's,  had  made  such  literary  lucid- 
ity and  grace  the  habit  of  his  pen,  and  he 
was  fortunate  in  employing  his  gift  upon 
subjects  intrinsically  most  interesting  to  cul- 
tivated men  :  upon  the  art  and  landscape  of 
Italy,  or  his  own  always  high  human  rela- 
tions, or  his  poetic  moods. 

In  what  he  says  of  statues  and  paintings 
he  shows  but  slight  knowledge  of  art.  The 
keenness  of  his  perceptions  and  the  warmth 


REMARKS   ON  SHELLEY.  221 

of  his  feelings  made  him  particularly  open 
to  sensuous  effects,  so  that  in  general  he 
worships  the  later  schools.  In  painting, 
especially,  he  can  hardly  be  considered  a  safe 
guide  for  others,  because  his  praise  or  cen- 
sure is  largely  dependent  on  his  tempera- 
ment for  its  justification  :  a  picture  which  is 
consonant  with  his  own  imagination,  and 
stirs  it,  is  thereby  raised  and  glorified,  but 
one  whose  theme  would  have  been  differ- 
ently developed  by  himself  is  at  once  made 
pale  by  contrast  with  the  quick  visions  of 
his  own  vividly  pictorial  mind.  Here  is  a 
portion  of  his  description  of  a  Christ  Beati- 
fied:— 

"  The  countenance  is  heavy,  as  it  were, 
with  the  rapture  of  the  spirit;  the  lips 
parted,  but  scarcely  parted,  with  the  breath 
of  intense  but  regulated  passion  ;  the  eyes 
are  calm  and  benignant ;  the  whole  features 
harmonized  in  majesty  and  sweetness." 

One  cannot  but  feel  that  the  face  which 
Shelley  thus  summons  up  before  ns  bears 
the  same  relation  to  the  original  as  what  the 
dull-minded  call  his  plagiarisms  from  Lodge 
do  to  that  poet's  lyrics.  Shelley  often  paints 
the  picture  over  upon  the  outlines  of  the  old 
canvas ;  but  this  transforming  or  penetrat- 


222  REMARKS  ON  SHELLEY. 

ing  power,  as  it  will  be  differently  named 
just  as  one  believes  the  given  picture  to  lack 
or  possess  what  Shelley  saw  in  it,  lends  such 
passages  not  only  surpassing  beauty,  but  a 
real  value  as  interpretations  of  art.  Much 
as  Ruskin  would  differ  from  Shelley's  judg- 
ments, the  two  are  essentially  similar  in  their 
mode  of  treatment,  and  in  their  faculty  of 
giving  the  equivalent  of  form  and  color  in 
eloquence. 

The  description  of  landscape,  which  is  an- 
other principal  topic,  possesses  even  more 
plainly  classic  beauty.  Whether  Shelley 
writes  of  nature  in  her  wild  and  picturesque 
scenes,  or  where  the  presence  of  man  has 
added  pathos  or  dignity  to  her  loveliness ; 
whether  he  flashes  the  view  upon  us  in  one 
perfect  line,  or  unfolds  it  slowly  in  uncon- 
fused  detail,  he  displays  the  highest  power 
in  this  field  of  literature.  This  view  from 
the  Forum  of  Pompeii,  which,  instead  of  ,be- 
ing  robed  with  "  the  gray  veil  of  his  own 
words,"  seems  filled  with  "  the  purple  noon's 
transparent  light,"  cannot  be  surpassed  as 
speech  at  once  familiar  and  noble  :  — 

"  At  the  upper  end,  suppoi'ted  on  an  ele- 
vated platform,  stands  the  temple  of  Jupi- 
ter.    Under  the  colonnade  of  its  portico  we 


REMARKS  ON  SHELLEY.  223 

sate,  and  pulled  out  our  oranges,  and  figs,  and 
bread,  and  raedlars,  —  sorry  fare,  you  will 
say,  —  and  rested  to  eat.  Here  was  a  mag- 
nificent spectacle.  Above  and  between  the 
multitudinous  shafts  of  the  sun-shinins:  col- 
umns  was  seen  the  sea,  reflecting  the  purple 
noon  of  heaven  above  it,  and  supporting,  as 
it  were,  on  its  line  the  dark,  lofty  mountains 
of  Sorrento,  of  a  blue  inexpressibly  deep, 
and  tinged  toward  their  summits  with 
streaks  of  new-fallen  snow.  Between  was 
one  small  green  island.  To  the  right  was 
Caprese,  Inarime,  Prochyta,  and  Misenum. 
Behind  was  the  single  summit  of  Vesuvius, 
rolling  forth  volumes  of  thick  white  smoke, 
whose  foam-like  column  was  sometimes  darted 
into  the  clear  dark  sky,  and  fell  in  little 
streaks  along  the  wind.  Between  Vesuvius 
and  the  nearer  mountains,  as  through  a 
chasm,  was  seen  the  main  line  of  the  lof- 
tiest Apennines  to  the  east.  The  day  was 
radiant  and  warm.  Every  now  and  then 
we  heard  subterranean  thunder  of  Vesuvius  ; 
its  distant,  deep  peals  seemed  to  shake  the 
very  air  and  light  of  day,  which  interpene- 
trated our  frames  with  the  sullen  and  tre- 
mendous sound." 

Thus   he  wrote  when   merely  passive   to 


224  REMARKS  ON  SHELLEY. 

nature's  influences  ;  but  when  he  begins  to 
think  he  irradiates  the  scene  ;  he  lifts  it 
with  his  aspiration  and  softens  it  with  his 
regret;  he  brings  it  near  by  reminiscences 
of  the  English  fields  and  cliffs  and  streams ; 
he  informs  it  with  the  large  interests  of  the 
intellectual  life  ;  and  not  infrequently  he 
concludes  with  a  passage  which,  in  the  ar- 
rangement of  its  images,  the  sequence  of  its 
thought  and  feeling,  the  unity  of  its  effect, 
in  all  except  metrical  structure,  is  a  poem. 
Many  paragraphs  might  be  cited  which 
show  the  character  of  his  genius  as  directly 
as  do  his  verses,  and  which  justify  the  claim 
advanced  for  them  as  having  the  permanent 
interest  of  ideal  beauty. 

The  principal  charm  of  these  letters,  how- 
ever, as  Dr.  Garnett  says,  is  not  artistic, 
but  moral.  It  is  not  meant  to  refer  by  this 
term  to  the  practical  morality  of  Shelley's 
deeds,  or  to  his  conscientiousness,  humanity, 
self-sacrifice,  or  other  such  qualities  as  they 
are  here  displayed ;  of  these  there  is  no 
longer  need  to  speak.  Nor  is  it  meant  sim- 
ply to  express  the  gratification  one  feels  at 
finding  that  Shelley,  unlike  many  men  of 
letters  who  disappoint  us  by  being  only 
common  mortals  in  private  life,  never  falls 


REMARKS  ON  SHELLEY.  225 

below  our  conception  of  him,  indicative  as  it 
is  of  his  purity  that  his  "  unpremeditated 
song  "  does  not  fail  to  reach  the  height  of 
his  great  argument.  What  impresses  one 
most  is  rather  the  character  of  the  life  it- 
self, of  the  mind  to  which  "  trust  in  all 
things  high  came  natural,"  that  moved  with 
equal  ease  among  the  things  of  beauty,  on 
the  heights  of  thought,  or  amid  the  common 
and  trivial  cares  of  household  life  and  in 
the  offices  of  friendship,  and  knew  no  dif- 
ference in  the  level  of  his  life,  so  single  was 
his  nature  and  so  completely  expressed  in 
all  he  did.  In  the  most  ideal  passages,  in 
those  most  impersonal,  one  does  not  lose  the 
sense  of  friendliness  in  them,  of  the  sweet 
human  relationship  which  underlies  the  tell- 
ing of  what  he  has  to  say,  and  keeps  the 
letters  in  their  appropriate  sphere.  They 
are  not  rhapsodies,  or  soliloquies,  or  dis- 
quisitions ;  in  other  words,  the  visitations  of 
the  spirit  that  came  to  Shelley,  and  left 
record  of  themselves  in  this  beauty  and  elo- 
quence and  imaginative  passion,  did  not  iso- 
late him  even  momentarily,  and  could  not 
sever  him  from  his  friends.  Who  these 
were,  we  know  well  enough  :  Miss  Hitche- 
ner,  the  blue-stocking ;  Hogg,  the  betrayer  ; 


22f)  REMARKS  ON  SHELLEY. 

the  Willi amses  and  Gisbornes,  who  seem  to 
have  belonged  to  the  class  of  people  known 
as  satisfying ;  Peacock,  who,  with  all  his 
nympholepsy,  was  a  born  beef-eater  ;  Smith, 
the  obliging ;  Hunt,  the  "  wren,"  and  Byron, 
the  "  eagle,"  in  Sl*elley's  nomenclature,  — 
the  too  fortunate  people  who  knew  Shelley 
and  whom  he  loved.  They  formed  the  en- 
vironment, which  needs  to  be  kept  in  mind 
by  any  who  would  estimate  Shelley's  moral 
power ;  amid  them  he  lived  his  high  life  and 
made  it  theirs,  in  the  case  of  the  most,  dur- 
ing:  their  communion  with  him.  In  a  vas^ue 
analogical  way  he  sometimes  brings  to  mind 
the  Greek  gods,  who,  with  all  their  divine 
attributes  of  beauty,  power,  dignity,  were 
singular  among  deities  for  their  companion- 
ableness ;  Shelley  had  that  divine  quality  of 
being  familiar  and  retaining  his  original 
brightness.  Toward  Byron  alone  does  he 
show  any  repulsion ;  he  recognized  Byron's 
admirable  qualities,  but  he  was  alienated 
by  the  latter's  selfishness,  worldliness,  and 
earthliness,  even  while  he  kept  terms  of 
amity.  Shelley's  sentence  on  Byron  is  most 
serious  evidence  against  him,  and  it  is  now 
supported  by  much  that  Shelley  could  not 


REMARKS  ON  SHELLEY.  227 

have  known ;  but  it  need  not  be  discussed 
here. 

It  is  especially  fortunate  that  the  letters 
exhibit  him  after  his  boyhood,  with  its  false 
starts,  its  follies  and  prejudices,  its  narrow- 
ness and  confusion,  was  passed  ;  of  that  time 
we  get  only  a  noble  echo  in  his  sad  remem- 
brance, amid  his  seeming  failure,  of  the  lofty 
purpose  with  which  he  had  entered  life, 
while  we  see  the  depth  unconf  used  by  the 
tumult  of  his  soul.  In  these  last  years,  it  is 
true,  the  thwarting  of  his  practical  instinct 
was  ending  in  hopelessness ;  but  if  the 
earthly  paradise  that  was  the  faith  of  his 
youth  was  now  fading  away,  he  was  lifting 
his  eyes  to  the  city  in  the  heavens,  and  had 
acknowledged  the  vanity  of  seeking  the  ideal 
he  knew,  except  in  the  eternal ;  he  had 
worked  out  his  salvation.  Perhaps  after  all 
we  do  wrong  to  lament  his  death ;  with  that 
tragedy,  in  which  every  thought  of  Shelley 
involuntarily  concludes,  his  work  as  a  quick- 
ener  of  the  spirit  was  accomplished.  More 
finished  works  of  art  he  might  have  given  to 
us  ;  he  could  not  have  left  a  nobler  or  more 
enkindling  memory.  These  letters  help  in 
the  still  necessary  labor  of   clearing  away 


228  BEMAEES  ON  SHELLEY. 

the  misconceptions  concerning  him.  In 
them  one  sees  him  only  in  the  quiet  of  his 
soul,  and  will  come  to  a  better  knowledge 
and  perhaps  a  higher  truth  concerning  him 
than  is  possible  by  reading  his  changeful 
poems  alone. 


SOME  ACTORS'  CRITICISMS  OF 
OTHELLO,  lAGO,  AND  SHY- 
LOCK. 

An  actor  of  genius,  at  the  moment  of  im- 
personating (either  in  imagination  or  in 
fact)  a  character  of  Shakespeare's,  is  prob- 
ably nearer  to  the  dramatist's  creative  mood 
than  any  one  else  can  get,  except  possibly 
the  poet  born.  He  may,  to  use  a  phrase  of 
Booth's,  in  speaking  of  this  mode  of  coming 
to  an  understanding  of  Shakespeare,  "  hit 
it "  by  the  mere  force  within  that  bears  him 
naturally  on.  Or,  to  take  the  case  in  which 
his  sympathy  with  the  role  is  imperfect,  he 
may  perceive  wherein  he  is  defective  more 
clearly  by  his  conscious  failure  than  by  any 
analysis.  Again,  the  difficulties  that  arise 
from  not  knowing  how  Shakespeare  put  the 
play  on  the  stage  may  not  be  solved  rightly, 
it  is  true,  by  the  moderns  ;  but  the  conclu- 
sions of  the  acting  fraternity  on  these  mat- 
ters are  much  more  worthy  of  weight  than 
those  of  men  unacquainted   with  the  prac- 

;i2g 


230         SOME  ACTORS'   CRITICISMS. 

tical  working  of  that  "  business  "  which  is 
a  sort  of  cement  for  the  scenes.  Support 
could  be  found  from  many  quarters  for  what 
Dr.  Furness  says  in  behalf  of  actors  as  use- 
ful critics ;  but  without  further  reasoning, 
one  may  invite  attention  to  some  considera- 
tions in  regard  to  Othello  suggested  by  quo- 
tations from  memoirs  of  the  profession  and 
other  records,  and  especially  from  Booth's 
annotated  acting-copy,  extracts  from  which, 
although  not  made  with  any  view  to  publica- 
tion, may  be  found  in  the  Variorum  edition 
of  the  play. 

Mr.  White,  in  his  satirical  essay  upon 
The  Acting  of  I  ago,  expresses  the  opinion 
that  all  the  modern  impersonations  are  in- 
adequate, and  that  the  fault  springs  from 
a  radical  misconception  of  the  character. 
Theatrical  companies  are  made  up,  every 
one  knows,  with  an  actor  for  each  of  the 
varieties  of  human  nature  which  are  usual 
in  a  play  ;  so  far  as  character  is  concerned, 
they  enact  types.  lago,  of  course,  falls  to 
the  lot  of  the  "  heavy  villain,"  whose  aim, 
in  stage  life,  is  to  do  his  wickedest  always, 
everywhere,  and  in  as  many  guises  as  pos- 
sible ;  he  is  continually  pointing  to  the  mark 
of  Cain  on  his  forehead,  so  that  there  shall 


SOME  ACTORS'   CRITICISMS.  231 

be  no  mistake  about  his  identity.  "  I  think," 
says  Booth,  —  and  the  criticism  holds  all 
the  meat  of  Mr.  White's  essay  in  a  nutshell, 
—  "  the  light  comedian  should  play  the  vil- 
lain's part,  not  the  '  heavy  man  ; '  I  mean 
the  Shakespearean  villains."  In  consonance 
with  this  is  his  reiterated  advice  to  his  lago 
to  think  evil  all  the  time,  but  not  to  show 
it ;  to  be  the  prince  of  good  fellows,  inex- 
haustible in  honhomie,  genial,  jovial,  gentle- 
manly, —  the  friend  and  pleasant  companion 
whom  every  one  liked,  whom  Desdemona 
trifled  with,  and  Cassio  respected  for  his 
soldiership,  and  Othello  trusted  as  a  man  as 
faithful  in  love  as  he  was  wise  in  the  world. 
"  A  certain  bluffness,"  Booth  says  "  (which 
my  temperament  does  not  afford),  should 
be  added  to  preserve  the  military  flavor  of 
the  character :  in  this  particular  I  fail  ut- 
terly ;  my  lago  lacks  the  soldierly  quality." 
So  far,  certainly,  Booth  does  not  differ  from 
Mr.  White  in  his  conception  of  the  bearing, 
the  outward  manner  and  sensible  aspect,  of 
the  Venetian  liar.  Let  us  look  at  it  from 
Mr.  White's  point  of  view :  "  Edwin  Booth's 
lago  is  not  externally  a  mere  hardened  vil- 
lain, but  a  super-subtle  Venetian,  who  works 
out  his  devilish  plans  with  a  dexterous  light- 


232  SOME  ACTORS'   CRITICISMS. 

ness  of  touch  and  smooth  sinuosity  of  move- 
ment that  suggest  the  transmigration  of  a 
serpent  into  human  form.  And  in  his  vis- 
age, and,  above  all,  in  his  eye,  burns  the 
venom  of  his  soul.  .  .  .  But  even  Edwin 
Booth's  lago,  although  much  finer  and  more 
nearly  consistent  with  itself  and  with  the 
facts  of  the  tragedy  than  any  other  that  is 
known  to  the  annals  of  the  stage,  is  not  the 
lago  that  Shakespeare  drew."  But  what  is 
it  that  is  lacking  ?  Mr.  White  paints  lago 
as  the  popular  flatterer,  the  sympathetic 
sycophant,  the  gay,  easy-going,  pleased,  and 
pleasing  fellow ;  and,  so  far  as  the  side 
shown  to  the  world  is  concerned,  this  is 
Booth's  conception,  and  (allowing  for  the 
defect  of  soldier -like  frankness  which  he 
feels  in  himself)  it  is  his  impersonation. 
Why  is  it  not,  then,  Shakespeare's  lago  ? 
Mr.  White  is  ready  with  his  answer :  Be- 
cause Shakespeare's  lago  would  do  no  harm, 
except  to  advance  his  fortunes ;  he  had  no 
malice ;  he  was  merely  selfish,  utterly  un- 
scrupulous as  to  his  means  of  obtaining  what 
he  sought,  ready  to  win  his  gain  at  any  ruin. 
Now,  it  is  clear  that  the  evil  which  Mr. 
White  has  just  said  burns  in  the  actor's  eye 
is  not  mere  selfishness,  not  the  cold  light  of 


SOME  ACTORS'   CBITICISMS.         233 

calculation  simply,  with  no  more  rooted  pas- 
sion ;  it  is  just  what  Mr.  White  says  lago 
did  not  have, — it  is  malice.  So  one  gets  the 
hint ;  and  on  searching  the  remarks  of  Booth 
to  see  what  indications  there  are  of  his  con- 
ception of  the  essence  of  lago's  soul,  the 
spring  of  his  motive,  the  changing  emotions 
that  enveloped  his  thoughts  at  their  birth, 
one  perceives  at  once  that,  while  Booth 
would  have  lago  outwardly  amiable,  he  has 
not  the  least  idea  of  reducing  the  dye  of 
villainy  in  which  the  character  has  been 
steeped  by  those  of  old  time.  Inside,  Booth 
has  no  doubt,  lago  was  a  spirit  of  hate,  and 
he  knows  at  what  moments  of  anxious  in- 
terest, at  what  crises  of  the  temptation  and 
the  plotting,  this  will  gleam  out  in  the  ex- 
pression of  the  eye,  or  in  those  slight  tell- 
tale changes  which  are  natural  to  the  most 
self-possessed  man,  and  are  significant  to  us 
only  because  we  are  on  the  watch  for  them. 
By  observing,  consequently,  with  what  pas- 
sages he  connects  this  devilish  malignancy 
of  nature  in  lago,  one  can  judge,  as  between 
him  and  Mr.  White,  what  justification  he 
has  for  making  lago  cruel  as  well  as  self- 
ish, and  revengeful  as  well  as  ambitious. 
Mr.  White's  theory  is  that  lago  wished  to 


234  SOME  ACTORS'   CRITICISMS. 

supplant  Cassio,  and  ruined  Desdemona  in 
order  to  accomplish  this  end  ;  that  he  used 
his  suspicion  of  Othello's  intimacy  with  his 
wife  almost  as  an  after-thought,  to  bolster 
up  his  purpose  with  an  excuse  ;  and  that, 
having  chosen  his  method  with  perfect  in- 
difference to  its  morality  or  its  humanity,  he 
overreached  himself  and  failed.  This  view 
may  gain  upon  one  by  its  plausible  and  em- 
phatic setting  forth,  just  as  pleas  for  Judas 
Iscariot  or  any  other  client  of  a  clever  devil's 
advocate  may  do,  but  only  momentarily ;  for 
when  one  attempts  to  adjust  the  speeches 
of  lago,  word  by  word  and  line  by  line,  to 
this  conception,  especially  with  such  notes 
of  direction  and  caution  as  these  of  Booth's 
to  the  actor,  echoing  the  text,  as  they  do, 
through  all  modulations  of  suspicion,  sus- 
pense, and  suppressed  passion,  the  idea  of 
an  lago  without  malice  simply  dissolves,  and 
leaves  not  a  rack  behind.  In  reality,  .this 
new  notion  of  Mr.  White's  is  only  the  old 
story  that  lago  is  motiveless,  which  has  dis- 
turbed so  many  critics,  and  given  occasion 
to  such  marvelous  explanations  of  his  vil- 
lainy. The  disparity  between  the  moral 
causes  and  the  mortal  results,  between  the 
errors  and  the  penalties  of  the  victims,  has 


( 


SOME  ACTORS'   CEITICISMS.  235 

been  widely  felt ;  the  attempt  is  consequently- 
made  to  ascribe  a  cause  for  the  catastrophe 
that  shall  justify  it  to  the  reason ;  and  nat- 
urally one  writer  has  over-accented  and  ex- 
aggerated one  element  in  the  play,  and  a 
second  writer  another  element,  and  so  on ; 
but  Mr.  White  bears  away  the  palm  from 
all  in  his  assertion  that  lago  did  all  the  mis- 
chief just  to  get  on  in  the  world,  and  that 
the  only  reason  it  was  so  great  was  because 
of  the  unlimited  power  for  harm  in  the  union 
of  ability  to  flatter  with  utter  unscrupulous- 
ness  in  a  man's  make-up.  Shakespeare  gives 
the  key-note  of  the  action  in  the  very  first 
words  lago  utters,  unheard  except  by  his 
own  bosom.  What  was  the  first  thought  on 
his  lips  then ?  "I  hate  the  Moor."  And 
perhaps  in  that  most  difficult  moment  of  the 
role,  the  climax  of  lago's  fate,  the  elder 
Booth  was  right  in  making  the  expression  of 
this  intense  enmity  dominant  in  "  the  Par- 
thian look  which  lago,  as  he  was  borne  off, 
wounded  and  in  bonds,  gave  Othello,  —  a 
Gorgon  stare,  in  which  hate  seemed  both 
petrified  and  petrifying."  In  this  matter 
the  actors  seem  to  carry  it  over  the  editor, 
who,  indeed,  was  in  that  essay  a  better  social 
satirist  than  Shakespearean  scholar ;  and,  to 


236  SOME  ACTOBS'   CRITICISMS. 

our  mind,  tlie  conception  of  Mr.  White  is 
too  inharmonious,  also,  with  the  intellectual 
power  and  the  delight  in  its  exercise  so 
marked  in  Shakespeare's  and  in  Booth's 
lago. 

There  is  more  scope  for  different  inter- 
pi-etations  in  Othello's  case  than  in  lago's. 
Othello,  it  is  obvious  to  any  one  of  the  least 
insight,  is  a  character  in  whom  temperament 
counts  for  so  much  more  than  anything  else 
as  practically  to  possess  the  whole  man ;  his 
actions  proceed  directly  from  his  nature ; 
his  doubts  and  suspicions  act  at  once  upon 
his  heart,  and  are  converted  into  emotion  of 
the  most  simple  and  primitive  type  almost 
instantaneously;  his  mental  agony  itself 
tends  to  become  blind  physical  suffering ;  he 
does  not  think,  —  he  feels.  It  is  in  the 
expression  of  temperament  that  the  actor  is 
left  most  free  by  the  dramatist,  is  least 
shackled  by  words,  and  oftenest  relies  upon 
other  modes  of  utterance,  among  which  (we 
too  easily  forget)  language  is  only  one. 

In  Othello,  consequently,  who  is  the  crea- 
ture of  his  temperament,  the  actor  influences 
the  character  to  an  unusual  degree ;  and  as 
the  range  of  feeling  is  from  the  lowest  notes 


SOME  ACTORS'  CRITICISMS.  237 

of  tender  happiness  to  the  explosions  of  un- 
limited despair,  the  way  in  which  the  actor 
conceives  of  feeling,  his  ideas  of  what  makes 
it  noble,  and  of  the  manner  in  which  a  grand 
nature  would  express  it,  affect  the  play  pro- 
foundly. A  certain  bent  has  been  given  to 
the  stage  interpretation  and  also  to  criticism, 
by  the  notion  that  Shakespeare  meant  to 
exhibit  in  Othello  a  barbaric  passion,  the 
boiling  up  of  a  savage  nature,  the  Oriental 
fervor  and  rashness,  the  daemon  of  the  Moor- 
ish race.  Yet  nothing  is  plainer  in  Shake- 
speare than  his  utter  disregard  of  historical 
accuracy ;  he  never  depicted  a  race  type,  ex- 
cept the  Jewish.  If  Theseus  is  an  Athenian, 
or  Coriolanus  or  Csssar  himself  a  Roman, 
then  Othello  may  be  a  Moor ;  but  it  is  most 
conformable  to  the  facts  to  regard  them  all 
as  simply  ideal  men,  who  take  from  their 
circumstances  a  color  of  nationality  and  a 
place  in  time,  but  who  are  essentially  all  of 
one  race.  The  view  of  those  actors  who 
give  Othello  a  ferocity  of  emotion  because 
he  is  a  Moor,  or  of  those  critics  who  discern 
in  the  violence  and  brute  unreason  of  some 
players  in  this  part  something  to  praise  on 
the  score  of  Othello's  birth  under  a  hot 
Mauritanian  sun  deserves  no  sympathy.    The 


238  SOME  ACTORS'   CRITICISMS. 

Oriental  touch  in  the  impersonation  ought 
not  to  go  beyond  such  slight  signs  and 
tokens  as  the  crescent  scimiter,  —  of  which 
Booth  says,  "  It  is  harmless,"  —  if  we  are  to 
keep  to  Shakespeare's  art  as  something  bet- 
ter than  a  costumer's.  Othello  does  not  ex- 
hibit one  extravagance  that  requires  to  be 
excused  by  the  reflection  that  it  is  natural 
to  an  alien  race,  though  not  to  the  English. 
But  within  the  limits  of  the  character  con- 
ceived as  merely  ideal,  there  is  a  fine  op- 
portunity for  difference  among  actors,  and 
they  have  availed  themselves  of  it.  To  in- 
dicate it  by  a  word,  Othello's  passion  seems 
to  have  been  the  cardinal  thought  of  Kean, 
irresistible,  compulsive  as  "the  Pontick  Sea," 
impressive  by  its  main  force  and  elemental 
sweep ;  Fechter,  whose  conception  of  noble- 
ness of  nature  was  a  poor  one,  sank  all  the 
heroic  in  the  melodrama  to  which  the  situa- 
tions lent  themselves  ;  and  Booth,  giving  far 
more  distinctness  to  Othello's  suffering,  go 
that  his  revenge  becomes  hardly  moi-e  than 
an  incident  in  the  course  of  his  own  soul's 
torture,  reveals  the  scene  of  the  tragedy  at 
once  as  in  Othello's  breast,  where  the  spirit 
of  evil  is  feeding  on  a  mighty  but  guileless 
heart.     It   is   not  Desdemona's   death  that 


SOME  ACTORS'   CRITICISMS.  239 

is  the  climax,  —  that  is  mere  pity  ;  but 
the  tragic  element  finds  its  conclusion  in 
Othello's  last  speech  and  stroke.  The  in- 
tensity of  Kean  or  the  ideality  of  Booth, 
working  upon  the  tragic  temperament  in 
each,  must  produce  Othello  with  a  differ- 
ence :  one  tempts  to  excess  in  ferocity,  the 
other  in  pathos  ;  but  either  is  consistent  with 
the  text.  After  all,  it  is  with  great  actors 
as  with  poets,  —  their  creations  partake  of 
their  own  nature,  in  all  heroic  and  ideal 
parts  ;  but  if,  as  is  thought,  sympathy  is  the 
best  revealer  of  the  inner  meaning  of  works 
of  the  imagination,  certainly  the  disciplined 
and  habitual  enacting  of  great  roles  by  ac- 
tors of  genius  ought  to  be  a  source  of  light 
and  knowledge  regarding  them,  notwith- 
standing the  allowance  that  is  to  be  made 
for  the  "  personal  error  "  of  individuality. 

It  is  a  striking  quality  in  the  immortality 
of  The  Merchant  of  Venice  that  it  has  sur- 
vived a  change  in  the  public  mind  in  its  at- 
titude toward  the  Jewish  people.  To  the 
Elizabethans,  and  Shakespeare  among  them, 
the  Jew  was  hateful.  It  may  well  be  ques- 
tioned to  what  extent  Shakespeare  himself, 
with  all  the  tolerance  that  his  understanding 


240  SOME  ACTORS'   CRITICISMS. 

of  the  springs  of  human  nature  gave  him, 
felt  the  pity  in  the  dramatic  situation  of 
Shylock  that  a  modern  audience  must  feel. 
Booth's  conception  of  Shakespeare's  creation 
is  too  direct  and  natural  not  to  justify  itself 
to  the  student,  —  "  '  an  inhuman  wretch,  in- 
capable of  pity,  void  and  empty  from  any 
dram  of  mercy.'  It  has  been  said  that  he 
was  an  affectionate  father  and  a  faithful 
friend.  When,  where,  and  how  does  he 
manifest  the  least  claim  to  such  commenda- 
tion ?  Tell  me  that,  and  unyoke !  'T  was 
the  money  value  of  Leah's  ring  that  he 
grieved  over,  not  its  association  with  her, 
else  he  would  have  shown  some  affection  for 
her  daughter,  which  he  did  not  or  she  would 
not  have  called  her  home  '  a  hell,'  robbed 
and  left  him.  Shakespeare  makes  her  do 
these  un- Hebrew  things  to  intensify  the 
baseness  of  Shylock's  nature.  If  we  side 
with  him  in  his  self-defense,  't  is  because  we 
have  charity,  which  he  had  not ;  if  we  pity 
him  under  the  burden  of  his  merited  pun- 
ishment, 't  is  because  we  are  human,  which 
he  is  not,  except  in  shape,  and  even  that,  I 
think,  should  indicate  the  crookedness  of  his 
nature."  Booth  goes  on  to  justify  this  tra- 
ditional  conception   by   an   easy   argument 


SOME  ACTORS'   CRITICISMS.  £41 

against  the  notion  of  "  the  heroic  Hebrew," 
the  type  of  the  vengeance  of  a  persecuted 
race,  whose  wrongs  justify  its  acts.  He  re- 
fers to  the  "  dangerous  '  bit  of  business  '  " 
when  Shylock  whets  his  knife.  "  Would 
the  heroic  Hebrew  have  stooped  to  such  a 
paltry  action  ?  No,  never,  in  the  very  white- 
heat  of  his  pursuit  of  vengeance  !  But  ven- 
geance is  foreign  to  Shylock's  thought ;  't  is 
revenge  he  seeks,  and  he  gets  just  what  all 
who  seek  it  get,  — '  sooner  or  later,'  as  the 
saying  is." 

This  characterization  is  not  too  vigorous, 
nor  does  it  go  too  far.  We  may  find  it  not 
only  in  Shylock  as  Shakespeare  drew  him, 
but  reflected  also  from  Antonio.  It  is  in 
Antonio  personally  that  the  attitude  of  the 
mediaeval  Christian  toward  the  Jew  is  found. 
The  unexplained  melancholy  of  Antonio,  his 
fidelity  in  high-minded  friendship,  and  the 
dignity  of  his  bearing  under  the  cruelty  to 
which  he  is  exposed  have  obscured  to  us  the 
other  side  of  his  character  as  the  Rialto 
merchant.  We  see  more  of  Bassanio's  An- 
tonio than  of  Shylock's  :  the  man  who  had 
interfered  with  the  usurer  in  every  way  and 
personally  maltreated  him,  and  was  as  like 
to   do  the   same  again ;   the   proud,  hard- 


242  SOME  ACTORS'   CRITICISMS. 

hearted,  and  insulting  magnifico  whom  Shy- 
lock  hated  for  himself.  Antonio  is  every 
whit  as  heartless  to  the  Jew  in  the  hour  of 
his  triumph  as  Shylock  was  to  him  when  the 
balance  leaned  the  other  way.  His  cruelty 
is  lacking  only  in  the  physical  element ;  it 
is  not  bloody,  but  it  goes  to  the  bone  and 
marrow  of  Shylock's  nature  none  the  less. 
There  is  no  sign  that  Shakespeare  saw  any 
wrong  in  all  this.  It  was  thus  that  the 
Christians  looked  upon  the  Jews,  and  they 
thought  such  treatment  right.  Shakespeare 
differed  from  others  —  from  Marlowe,  for 
example,  in  his  delineation  of  the  Jew  of 
Malta  —  in  one  point  only :  he  was  able  to 
take  Shylock's  point  of  view,  to  understand 
his  motives,  to  assign  the  reasons  with  which 
revenge  justified  its  own  motions ;  in  a  word, 
to  represent  Shylock's  humanity.  The 
speeches  he  puts  into  the  Jew's  mouth  are 
intense  and  eloquent  expressions  of  the  rea- 
soning of  that  "  lodged  hate  "  in  his  bosom  ; 
they  are  true  to  fact  and  to  nature  ;  on  our 
ears  they  come  with  overwhelming  force, 
and  it  is  impossible  to  our  thoughts  that 
Shakespeare  could  have  written  them  with- 
out sympathy  for  the  wrongs  that  they  set 
forth  with  such  fiery  heat.     But  when  from 


SOME  ACTOES'   CEITICISMS.         243 

this  it  is  argued  that  Shakespeare,  in  writing 
this  play,  made  a  deliberate  plea  for  tolera- 
tion, and  carried  it  as  far  as  the  necessities 
of  his  plot  and  the  temper  of  his  times  per- 
mitted, then  it  is  needful  to  remind  ourselves 
of  what  Booth  calls  "  the  baseness  of  Shy- 
lock's  nature."  Shakespeare  did  represent 
him  as  base,  with  avarice,  cunning,  and  re- 
venge for  the  constituent  elements  of  his 
character ;  he  did  not  hesitate  to  let  the 
exhibition  of  these  low  qualities  approach 
the  farcical,  as  he  would  never  have  done 
had  he  thought  of  the  Jew  as  in  any  sense 
heroic.  Shylock  had  suffered  insult  and 
wrong,  but  there  was  nothing  in  him  indi- 
vidually to  excite  commiseration.  From  be- 
ginning to  end  he  shows  no  noble  quality. 
Modern  sympathy  with  him,  apart  from  the 
pity  that  tragedy  necessarily  stirs,  is  social 
sympathy,  not  personal ;  it  is  because  he  is 
an  outcast  and  belongs  to  an  outcast  race, 
because  every  man's  hand  is  against  him  and 
against  all  his  people,  that  the  audience  of 
this  century  perceives  an  injustice  inherent 
in  his  position  itself,  antecedent  to,  and  in- 
dependent of,  any  of  his  acts  ;  and  this  in- 
justice is  ignored  in  the  play.  The  feeling 
which    Shylock,   as   a  person,  excites,  and 


244  SOME  ACTORS'  CRITICISMS. 

should  excite,  is  nearer  that  which  Lady 
Martin  describes  as  her  experience :  "  I  have 
always  felt  in  the  acting  that  my  desire  to 
find  extenuations  for  Shylock's  race  and  for 
himself  leaves  me,  and  my  heart  grows  al- 
most as  stony  as  his  own.  I  see  his  fiendish 
nature  fully  revealed,  I  have  seen  the  knife 
sharpened  to  cut  quickly  through  the  flesh, 
the  scales  brought  forward  to  weigh  it ;  have 
watched  the  cruel,  eager  eyes,  all  strained 
and  yearning  to  see  the  gushing  blood  well- 
ing from  the  side  '  nearest  the  heart,'  and 
gloating  over  the  fancied  agonies  and  death- 
pangs  of  his  bitter  foe.  This  man-monster, 
this  pitiless,  savage  nature,  is  beyond  the 
pale  of  humanity ;  it  must  be  made  power- 
less to  hurt.  I  have  felt  that  with  him  the 
wrongs  of  his  race  are  really  as  nothing 
compared  with  his  own  remorseless  hate. 
He  is  no  longer  the  wronged  and  suffering 
man  ;  and  I  longed  to  pour  down  on  his 
head  the  '  justice '  he  has  clamored  for,  and 
will  exact  without  pity."  Upon  this  matter 
Spedding  admits  of  no  reply.  "  The  best 
contribution,"  he  says,  "  which  I  can  offer 
to  this  discussion  is  the  expression  of  an  old 
man's  difficulty  in  accepting  these  new  dis- 
coveries of  profound  moral  and  political  de« 


SOME  ACTORS'   CRITICISMS.  245 

signs  underlying  Shakespeare's  choice  and 
treatment  of  his  subjects.  I  believe  he  was 
a  man  of  business,  —  that  his  principal  busi- 
ness Was  to  produce  plays  which  would 
draw.  .  .  .  But  if,  instead  of  looking  about 
for  a  story  to  '  please '  the  Globe  audience, 
he  had  been  in  search  of  a  subject  under 
cover  of  which  he  might  steal  into  their 
minds  '  a  more  tolerant  feeling  toward  the 
Hebrew  race,'  I  cannot  think  he  would  have 
selected  for  his  hero  a  rich  Jewish  merchant 
plotting  the  murder  of  a  Christian  rival  by 
means  of  a  fraudulent  contract,  which  made 
death  the  penalty  of  non-payment  at  the 
day,  and  insisting  on  the  exaction  of  it.  In 
a  modern  Christian  audience  it  seems  to  be 
possible  for  a  skillful  actor  to  work  on  the 
feelings  of  an  audience  so  far  as  to  make 
a  man  engaged  in  such  a  business  an  object 
of  respectful  sympathy.  But  can  anybody 
believe  that  in  times  when  this  would  have 
been  much  more  difficult,  Shakespeare  would 
have  chosen  such  a  case  as  a  favorable  one 
to  suggest  toleration  to  a  public  prejudiced 
against  Jews  ?  " 

The  omnipresent  devil's  advocate  has  sev- 
eral times  come  to  Shylock's  defense  with  a 
legal  plea.    Those  who  could  find  something 


246  SOME  ACTORS'   CRITICISMS. 

to  urge  in  extenuation  of  Judas  Iscariot  had 
an  easy  task  in  showing  that  the  Jew  of 
Venice  was  more  sinned  against  than  sin- 
ning. The  decisions  of  the  young  doctor 
who  came  armed  with  the  recommendation 
of  the  learned  Bellario  have  been  overruled 
in  every  court  of  appeal.  The  bond  itself 
is  declared  invalid,  inasmuch  as  it  contained 
an  immoral  proviso  in  the  article  that  sought 
Antonio's  death;  the  attempt  to  defeat  it, 
its  validity  having  once  been  granted,  by  de- 
nying the  right  to  draw  blood  and  requiring 
the  exact  amount  of  a  pound  of  flesh  to  be 
cut  out,  is  characterized  as  a  wretched  quib- 
ble, and  set  aside  on  the  ground  that  a  right 
once  allowed  carries  with  it  the  minor  rights 
to  make  it  effectual ;  the  denial  of  the  orig- 
inal debt  for  the  reason  that  it  had  been  ten- 
dered and  refused  in  open  court  is  declared 
a  gross  error,  such  tender  having  no  other 
result  than  to  destroy  any  claim  for  interest 
subsequently.  But  not  to  mention  all  the 
grave  reasons  alleged  to  break  down  the 
reputation  of  the  Court  of  Venice  and  show 
the  illegality  of  its  judgments,  it  is  clear 
that  on  legal  grounds  the  case  was  very 
badly  managed,  and  in  the  event  the  Jew 
met  with  no  better  fortune  than  was  the  lot 


SOME  ACTORS'   CRITICISMS.  247 

of  his  race  before  an  unscrupulous  and  hos- 
tile tribunal  everywhere.  Nevertheless,  the 
disputants  upon  the  other  side,  who  allege  the 
substantial  justice  of  the  decisions  rendered, 
do  well  to  remove  the  discussion  out  of  the 
plane  of  legality.  There  is  much  that  is 
weighty  in  their  argument.  Shyloek  must 
be  regarded  as  standing,  after  the  nature  of 
Judaism,  for  the  law  as  a  thing  of  the  letter ; 
this  is  the  justice  which  he  demands,  not 
real,  but  literal ;  and  if,  by  a  still  more 
strict  interpretation  of  the  letter  of  the  bond 
than  he  had  thought  of,  his  claim  was  de- 
feated, the  audience  will  acknowledge  the 
relevancy  of  the  new  point  that  is  made, 
and  will  enjoy  the  spectacle  of  the  Biter 
Bit,  in  which  there  is  always  an  element  of 
comic  justice.  As  to  the  quibble  involved, 
that  belonsTS  to  the  nature  of  literal  inter- 
pretation  always.  Thus  the  matter  is  not 
without  defense  even  on  this  level.  But 
what  really  pleases  the  audience  is  not  the 
method,  but  the  fact,  of  the  Jew's  defeat; 
and  in  the  fact,  however  brought  about,  lies 
the  ethical  element,  the  victory  of  real  over 
illusory  justice,  of  equity  over  legality,  of 
the  right  over  the  pretense  of  right.  Shake- 
speare was  not  exjiressly  philosophical ;  but 


248         SOME  ACTORS'  CRITICISMS. 

there  is  little  straining  of  the  facts  of  the 
case  in  the  view  that  in  the  discomfiture  of 
that  "  law  "  which  the  Jew  invoked,  in  the 
signal  defeat  inflicted  on  the  letter  of  the 
bond,  there  is  a  suggestion  of  the  conflict 
between  Judaism  and  Christianity,  the  lit- 
eral and  the  spiritual,  the  law  and  that  jus- 
tice with  its  elements  of  mercy  into  which 
the  law  develops,  which  is  one  of  the  great 
phases  of  historical  civilization.  Whether 
Shakespeare  put  it  there  is  immaterial ;  but 
that  a  modern  audience  finds  it  there,  and 
that  it  was  at  least  dimly  present  to  an 
Elizabethan  audience,  is  hardly  to  be  ques- 
tioned. The  idea  is  a  simple  and  ancient 
one ;  and  in  it  is  to  be  found  whatever  eth- 
ical meaning  the  play  may  have. 

But  it  ought  to  be  always  remembered 
that  the  primary  endowment  of  Shakesj)eare 
was  the  artistic  temperament :  he  was  a  poet 
first,  and  everything  else  afterwards.  To 
say  this  is  the  same  thing  with  saying  — 
though  it  must  be  stated  briefly  —  that  the 
ethical  principle  in  him  was  a  necessity  of 
the  imagination,  not  of  the  understanding ; 
was  vision  rather  than  inference  ;  was  a  part 
and  not  the  whole.  One  can  no  more  im- 
agine life  truly  without  ethics  than  he  can 


SOME  ACTORS'  CRITICISMS.  249 

imagine  mass  without  cohesion ;  a  creative 
genius,  consequently,  a  man  of  imagination 
all  compact,  does  not  necessarily  start  from 
ethics  in  moulding  his  works,  but  it  is  more 
likely  that  the  moral  principle  which  his 
works  must  contain  as  a  part  of  their  real- 
ity will  be  secondary  and  derivative.  Shake- 
speare is  ethical  because  he  imagined  life 
truly ;  he  did  not  imagine  life  truly  because 
he  had  thought  out,  in  Lord  Bacon's  man- 
ner, the  general  principles  of  morals. 


SIR    GEORGE    BEAUMONT,  COLE- 
RIDGE, AND  WORDSWORTH. 

Sir  George  Beaumont  appears  to  have 
been  one  of  the  most  agreeable  of  men. 
He  had  not  merely  high  breeding,  but  hu- 
manity of  disposition,  delightful  compan- 
ionableness,  and  the  refinement  that  springs 
from  artistic  pursuits.  Haydon  accuses  his 
manners  of  a  want  of  moral  courage.  "  What 
bis  taste  dictated  to  be  right,  he  would 
shrink  from  asserting  if  it  shocked  the  pre- 
judices of  others  or  put  himself  to  a  mo- 
ment's inconvenience,"  was  the  fault  that 
this  critic  had  in  mind ;  but  this  is  only  to 
class  him  with  the  men  who  do  not  think 
that  the  truth  is  always  to  be  spoken  in  so- 
ciety, and  prefer  tact  to  an  aggressive  .ego- 
tism. Sir  Humphry  Davy  notices  espe- 
cially that  he  was  a  "  remarkably  sensible 
man,  which  I  mention  because  it  is  some- 
what remarkable  in  a  painter  of  genius  who 
is  at  the  same  time  a  man  of  rank  and  an 

exceedingly  amusing  companion."     Southey 

263 


BEAUMONT,  COLERIDGE,  ETC.        251 

was  struck  by  the  apparent  happiness  of  his 
life,  and  the   absence   of   any  reference    to 
afflictions  or  anxieties  that  he  might  have 
experienced,  and  says  that  he  "  had  as  little 
liking  for  country  sports  as  for  public  busi- 
ness of  any  kind,"  being   absorbed   by  art 
and  nature  ;  and,  to  add  Scott's  kind  words 
of   him   in  his  diary,  that  excellent  judge 
writes,  "  Sir  George  Beaumont  's  dead  ;  by 
far  the   most  sensible   and  pleasing  man  I 
ever  knew.     Kind,  too,  in  his  nature,  and 
generous,  —  gentle  in  society,  and  of  those 
mild  manners  which  tend  to  soften  the  caus- 
ticity of  the  general  London  tone  of  persi- 
flage and  personal  satire.     I  am  very  sorry 
—  as  much  as  it  is  in  my  nature  to  be  —  for 
one  whom  I  could  see  but  seldom."     This  is 
a  concert  of  praise  which  it  is  a  pleasure  to 
associate  with  the   name  of   the   man  who 
was,  chiefly,  the   founder   of  the   National 
Gallery  in  Trafalgar  Square. 

He  was  a  friend  of  the  artists  of  his  time, 
and  a  patron  of  Wilkie  and  Haydon  when 
they  needed  aid.  In  the  latter's  autobiog- 
raphy there  is  a  bright  account  of  a  fort- 
night's visit  paid  by  these  two  to  Coleorton, 
Sir  George's  country-seat,  which  brings  the 
interior  life  there  vividly  to  the  eye,  though 


252       BEAUMONT,  COLERIDGE,  ETC. 

it  borrows  sometliing  from  the  unconscious 
humor  of  the  narrator,  who  always  fills  the 
scene  with  himself  in  the  leading  part.  One 
pauses  to  note  a  characteristic  sentence  of 
the  incorrigible  beggar  in  which  he  breaks 
out  with  the  indignant  remark,  "  All  my 
friends  were  always  advising  me  what  to  do 
instead  of  advising  the  Government  what  to 
do  for  me."  Sir  George,  however,  had  other 
friends,  and  most  noteworthy  of  all,  Words- 
worth, of  whom  he  first  heard  from  Cole- 
ridge. Before  meeting  him,  understanding 
that  the  two  friends  wished  to  live  in  the 
same  neighborhood,  he  bought  and  presented 
to  Wordsworth  the  little  property  of  Apple- 
thwaite  near  Greta  Hall,  Coleridge's  abode. 
Wordsworth  never  used  the  ground  for  the 
purpose  for  which  it  was  given,  but  it  re- 
mained in  his  possession.  From  this  time, 
1803,  a  close  friendship  grew  up  between 
his  family  at  Grasmere  and  the  one  at  Cole- 
orton,  grounded  upon  common  interests  and 
cemented  with  mutual  exchano^es  of  kind- 
ness  and  regard,  so  that  it  survived  until 
the  death  of  Sir  George  and  Lady  Beau- 
mont, herself  an  excellent  woman,  of  whom 
Crabb  Robinson  wrote,  "  She  is  a  gentle- 
woman  of   great  sweetness   and  dignity,  I 


BEAUMONT,  COLEEIDGE,  ETC.       253 

should  tliink  among  the  most  interesting 
persons  in  the  country." 

Of  the  two  poets  Coleridge  was  at  first 
more  intimate  with  the  Beaumonts.  This 
was  in  1803,  the  period  of  his  illness,  just 
previous  to  the  voyage  to  Malta.  The  let- 
ters he  wrote  are  very  painful  to  read.  The 
subject  is  usually  the  ego ;  and  in  reading 
the  apologies  of  the  writer  for  treating  of 
this  ever-present  theme,  and  his  observa- 
tions on  his  own  lack  of  vanity  and  the 
danger  he  is  in  of  undervaluing  his  powers 
and  works,  one  can  scarcely  fail  to  be  stnick 
by  the  identity  in  many  respects  of  the  ego- 
tism of  the  overweening  and  of  the  self- 
depreciating  kinds.  The  aspects  are  differ- 
ent, but  the  weakness  has  the  same  root.  In 
Coleridge  it  was,  perhaps,  no  more  than  a 
question  of  the  state  of  his  stomach  whether 
his  assiduous  interest  in  himself  should  re- 
sidt  in  intellectual  pride  or  in  self-abase- 
ment ;  but  without  giving  too  severe  a  touch, 
it  is  clear  enough  that  his  eye,  when  fixed 
on  himself,  was  on  the  wrong  object. 

The  letters  to  the  Beaumonts  are  charac- 
terized by  this  complaining  and  absorbing 
egotism  of  the  invalid,  unfortified  by  pa- 
tience, resolution,  or  even  self-respect.     The 


254       BEAUMONT,  COLEBIDGE,  ETC. 

ravages  of  disease  in  its  physical  aspects,  the 
laying  bare  of  bodily  conditious  and  symp- 
toms of  decay,  would  be  in  themselves  intol- 
erably disagreeable,  but  it  is  much  worse  to 
be  obliged  to  attend  at  the  sick-bed  of  the 
mind ;  and  in  Coleridge's  case  the  internal 
weakness  of  the  spirit  excites  the  greatest 
pity,  and  this  feeling  nearly  passes  involun- 
tarily into  disgust.  The  sensibility  of  his 
nervous  organization  was  acute.  He  speaks 
of  times  when,  as  he  was  accusing  himself 
of  insensibility  through  incapacity  to  feel,  his 
"  whole  frame  has  gone  crash,  as  it  were." 
Under  the  excitement  of  his  emotions,  he 
dissolves  in  weakness  ;  the  spectacle  is  not 
a  pleasant  one  ;  there  is  sometliing  almost 
ignoble  in  such  loss  of  self-control.  When 
Wordsworth  recited  to  him,  if  one  can  fancy 
such  a  thing,  the  entire  thirteen  books  on 
the  growth  of  his  own  mind,  in  1807,  Cole- 
ridge composed  a  poem,  not  very  coherent  or 
noble,  though  with  personal  pathos,  in  which 
he  says  that  when  he  rose  from  his  seat,  he 
"  found  himself  in  prayer."  It  was  appar- 
ently not  an  unusual  termination  to  the  ac- 
cess of  emotion,  and  it  occurred  more  than 
once  in  his  relations  with  the  Beaumonts. 
The  mention  of   it,  however,  in  his   corre- 


BEAUMONT,  COLERIDGE,  ETC.       255 

spondence  with  them,  offends  one,  not  in  it- 
self, but  by  the  manner  of  it ;  indeed,  the 
manner  of  his  earlier  letters  is  indescriba- 
ble. Their  sentiment  is  so  tremulous  and 
overwrought  with  fever  that  they  resemble 
maundering  ;  they  are  "  sicklied  o'er  "  with 
mental  disease,  and  belong  to  the  pathology 
of  genius. 

One  long  epistle,  in  which  he  devotes  him- 
self to  an  analysis  of  his  mental  condition 
at  the  time  when  he  was  what  is  now  known 
as  a  Social  Democrat,  shows  by  an  eminent 
example  in  what  ways  the  minds  of  young 
men  of  enthusiasm,  who  have  caught  the 
contagion  of  new  ideas,  commonly  act,  and 
how  their  tongues  are  kept  going.  Cole- 
ridge and  Southey  were  rampant  young 
radicals  for  about  ten  months,  and  might 
many  times  have  been  justly  thrown  into 
jail  for  the  use  of  unlawful  language  and 
seditiously  fomenting  the  passions  of  the 
people.  Coleridge  ascribes  the  beginning 
of  his  ramblings  from  the  true  path  of  re- 
spectable politics  partly  to  his  intellectual 
isolation  among  his  relatives  and  virtuous 
acquaintances  generally,  who  thought  that 
his  "  opinions  were  the  drivel  of  a  babe,  but 
the  guilt  attached  to  them,  —  this  was  the 


256        BEAUMONT,  COLERIDGE,  ETC. 

gray  hair  and  rigid  muscle  of  inveterate 
depravity ; "  and  partly,  he  declares,  it  was 
due  to  the  thirst  for  kindness  planted  in 
himself,  in  that  "  me,  who,"  he  says,  "  from 
my  childhood  have  had  no  avarice,  no  ambi- 
tion, whose  very  vanity  in  my  vainest  mo- 
ments was  nine  tenths  of  it  the  desire  and 
delight  and  necessity  of  loving  and  of  being 
beloved,"  —  needs  which  he  found  satisfied 
in  the  welcome  and  company  of  '^'  the  Dem- 
ocrats." So  he  fell  among  evil  companions. 
On  becoming  an  agitator  upon  the  platform 
he  succumbed  to  the  temptations  of  the 
fluent  speaker,  gifted  "with  an  ebullient 
fancy,  a  flowing  utterance,  a  light  and  dan- 
cing heart,  and  a  disposition  to  catch  time 
by  the  very  rapidity  of  my  own  motion,  and 
to  speak  vehemently  from  mere  verbal  asso- 
ciations ;  choosing  sentences  and  sentiments 
for  the  very  reason  which  would  have  made 
me  recoil  with  a  dying  away  of  the  heart 
and  unutterable  horror  from  the  actions  ex- 
pressed in  such  sentiments  and  sentences, 
namely,  because  they  were  wild  and  original, 
and  vehement  and  fantastic."  Here  is  a 
choice  specimen  of  his  eloquence,  on  the  oc- 
casion of  a  supper  by  some  Lord,  to  com- 
memorate an  Austrian  victory :  "  This  is  a 


BEAUMONT,  COLERIDGE,  ETC.       257 

true  Lord's  Supper  in  the  communion  of 
darkness !  This  is  a  Eucharist  of  Hell !  a 
sacrament  of  misery !  over  each  morsel  and 
each  drop  of  which  the  spirit  of  some  mur- 
dered innocent  cries  aloud  to  God,  This  is 
my  body !  and  this  is  my  blood  !  "  There  is 
one  sin  against  society,  however,  which  he 
declined  to  commit,  and  he  took  great  credit 
to  himself  for  his  obstinate  refusal.  He 
joined  no  party,  club,  or  any  of  the  radical 
societies,  which  he  characterizes  as  "  asca- 
rides  in  the  bowels  of  the  state,  subsisting 
on  the  weakness  and  diseasedness,  and  hav- 
ing for  their  final  object  the  death  of  that 
state,  whose  life  had  been  their  birth  and 
growth,  and  continued  to  be  their  sole  nour- 
ishment." He  remained  outside  of  these 
entangling  alliances,  a  free-lance  speechifier, 
in  the  condition  of  mind  of  the  willing  mar- 
tyr :  "  The  very  clank  of  the  chains  that 
were  to  be  put  about  my  limbs  would  not  at 
that  time  have  deterred  me  from  a  strong 
phrase  or  striking  metaphor,  although  I  had 
had  no  other  inducement  to  the  use  of  the 
same  except  the  wantonness  of  luxuriant  im- 
gination,  and  my  aversion  to  abstain  from 
anything  simply  because  it  was  dangerous." 
Such  was  Coleridge  at  twenty -four  years,  — 


258       BEAUMONT,  COLERIDGE,  ETC. 

the  age  at  which  Emmett  was  executed; 
whose  death  called  out  this  long  letter  of  rem- 
iniscences concerning  his  own  career  as  an 
agitator,  and  of  reflections  upon  the  impulses 
and  justification  of  revolutionary  orators, 
their  tempations,  errors,  and  illusions.  He 
understood  the  fate  of  Emmett  with  greater 
clearness  because  of  this  little  episode  in  his 
own  life,  and  it  is  noticeable  that  he  has  the 
grace  not  to  think  that  the  young  patriot's 
career  bore  too  much  resemblance  to  his 
own ;  but  this  confession  of  his  foolishness 
in  general,  spread  out  somewhat  magnilo- 
quently  before  the  eyes  of  his  aristocratic 
correspondent,  is  a  lesson  in  human  nature 
well  worth  a  moment's  attention  from  con- 
servative and  orderly  people. 

Coleridge's  career — if  a  brief  digression 
may  be  pardoned  here  —  was  only  too  much 
in  keeping  with  the  temperament  of  these 
letters  to  the  Beaumonts.  Wherever  one 
comes  upon  it  in  the  memoirs  of  the  tim-e, 
the  story  is  the  same.  Soften  it  as  we  may, 
that  career  was  one  of  those,  too  frequent 
among  men  of  letters,  that  can  never  be 
told,  so  marred  by  disease  and  by  moral 
feebleness,  so  full  of  shame  and  supineness 
and  waste,  that  it  must  be  kept  out  of  sight. 


BEAUMONT,  COLERIDGE,  ETC.       259 

During  the  years  of  his  maturity  he  was  a 
broken  man,  and  knew  himself  to  be  such ; 
from  the  time  that,  in  becoming  the  victim 
of  opium,  he  lost  what  little  will-power  was 
originally  his,  he  felt  that  the  spirit  of  im- 
agination had  left  his  house  of  life,  and  in 
its  place  was  henceforward 

*'  Sense  of  past  youth,  and  manhood  come  m  vain, 
And  genius  given,  and  knowledge  won  in  vain ;  " 

and  in  this  mood  of  pervading  despondency 
he  seems  always  in  fancy  to  be  haunting  the 
grave  of  his  dead  self.  This  consciousness 
of  his  loss,  though  it  had  more  of  the  stupor 
of  despair  than  of  the  sharpness  of  peni- 
tence, lends  some  impressiveness  to  his 
story ;  but  this  pain  was  not  searching 
enough  to  save  him  for  himseK,  nor  of  a 
kind  to  make  men  oblivious  of  those  violent 
contrasts  in  his  life  which  offend  our  sense 
of  rightness.  It  is  a  morally  confusing  spec- 
tacle to  see  genius  professing  the  highest 
knowledge  of  the  secret  things  of  God,  but 
itself  wrecked ;  and  it  requires  something 
more  than  the  poet's  sorrow  at  the  wither- 
ing of  his  wreath  to  reconcile  such  an  an- 
tithesis. 

Then,  too,  although  Coleridge's  poetic  im- 
agination undoubtedly  was  quenched  at  once, 


260       BEAUMONT,  COLERIDGE,  ETC. 

or  gave  out  only  brief  and  random  flashes 
in  his  manhood,  it  may  well  be  questioned 
whether  the  waste  of  his  faculties  was  not 
due  quite  as  much  to  mismanagement  of 
the  mind  as  to  the  palsying  of  his  powers 
of  effort,  purpose,  or  orderly  reduction  of 
thought.  He  lived  in  the  period  of  univer- 
sal philosophers,  and  in  his  study  of  meta- 
physics and  theology  in  Germany  he  must 
have  fixed  in  his  mind  the  habit  of  includ- 
ing the  omne  scibile  in  his  system.  This 
was  the  more  easy  for  him,  as  he  had  in  un- 
usual proportion  that  false  comprehensive- 
ness which  seizes  on  knowledge,  not  by  all  its 
relations  as  it  stands  in  the  body  of  science, 
but  by  some  particular  relation  which  it  may 
seem  to  bear,  truly  or  untruly,  to  some  pre- 
conceived idea  that  has  been  taken  as  the 
organizing  principle  of  the  new  scheme.  It 
is  because  of  their  common  participation  in 
this  method  that  poetry  and  philosophy,  in 
the  old  sense,  approach  so  much  nearer  each 
other  than  either  does  to  science.  It  is  plain 
to  any  one  who  reads  the  topics  of  Cole- 
ridge's discourses  that  his  mind  ranged 
through  a  vast  circuit  of  knowledge  habitu- 
ally, but  also  that  it  touched  the  facts  only 
at  single  points  and  superficially ;  in  other 


BEAUMONT,  COLEBIBGE,  ETC.       261 

words,  he  displays  compass  rather  than 
grasp.  In  dealing  with  the  mass  of  his 
learning,  he  showed  no  lack  of  systematiz- 
ing power,  though  it  may  easily  be  believed 
that  in  conversation  with  chance  visitors  the 
fine  filaments  of  logical  connection  escaped 
their  sight.  The  trouble  was  in  the  original 
mode  of  elaborating  the  system  —  the  old 
Greek  way  of  philosophizing  by  subtle  ma-, 
nipulation  of  analogies,  convenient  facts^ 
half-understood  harmonies  of  this  with  that, 
arbitrary  constructions,  with  now  and  then 
a  dead  plunge  into  the  unfathomable.  To 
borrow  Coleridge's  own  distinction,  this  pro- 
cedure is  to  logic  what  fancy  is  to  the  im- 
agination —  a  freak  of  the  mind  partly  out 
of  relation  to  the  truth  of  things.  It  is  a 
modern  form  of  scholasticism. 

Coleridge,  however,  whose  speculative  pow- 
ers were  thus  employed,  is  believed  to  have 
been  a  great  light  to  those  who  had  eyes  to 
see.  What  particular  truth  Maurice  and 
others  derived  from  him  is,  nevertheless,  not 
evident.  He  shared  the  awakening  power 
that  idealists  possess,  generally  in  propor- 
tion to  their  consistency  and  the  intensity  of 
their  personal  conviction.  Idealism,  by  the 
very  fact  that  it  is  an  enfranchisement  from 


262       BEAUMONT,  COLERIDGE,  ETC. 

sense,  is  a  tonic  to  the  mind ;    it  quickens 
the  activity  of   thought   and    facilitates   its 
processes  because  it  assumes  the  mastery  of 
the  universe,  and  makes  reality  pliable  to  its 
hand.     This  may  or  may  not  be  lawful,  but 
it  generates  a  feeling  of  command  and  of 
liberty  highly  favorable  to  spiritual  develop- 
ment.    To  some  men  impressionable  on  that 
side  of  their  nature  Coleridge  was  the  giver 
of  this  freedom,  and  this  has  been  the  case 
especially  with  members  of  the  clergy  who 
are  closely  attached  to   theological   dogma. 
Such  persons  foimd  in  Coleridge's  mind  the 
rare  and  curious  coexistence  of  fixed  dogma 
with  incessant  speculation :  he  afforded  the 
sense  of  uutrammeled  investigation  without 
once    disturbing    the    certainty  of    the  pre- 
judged cause.     This  phantom  of  liberalism 
was  a  very  quieting  tutelar  genius  to  some 
educated  men,  who  thus  kept  up  a  semblance 
of   thinking ;  but   influence  of   this  sort  is 
necessarily  transitory.     His  Scriptural  ren- 
derings of  philosophy  give  place  to  those  of 
other  theologians,   who    rationalize   on  new 
grounds  of  scientific  knowledge  instead  of 
German  metaphysics,  while  the  stimulation 
that  was  furnished  by  his  idealism  may  be 
more  simply  and  directly  derived  from  less 


BEAUMONT,  COLEBIDGE,  ETC.       263 

involved  and  abstruse  thinkers.  His  theol- 
ogy and  metaphysics,  in  pursuit  of  which 
he  wasted  his  powers,  are  already  seen  to  be 
transient.  On  the  other  hand,  his  criticism 
has  articulated  the  works  of  minor  authors 
who  have  themselves  written  in  a  formal 
style,  nor  has  its  influence  been  harmed  by 
its  frequent  over  -  refinement  and  fanciful- 
ness ;  and  his  poetry  has  remained  untouched 
by  time.  It  belongs  to  the  period  of  his 
early  enthusiasm,  before  he  had  become  too 
dulled  for  the  breath  of  inspiration  to  kindle 
him ;  and  fortunately  one  can  read  nearly 
all  the  best  of  it  without  a  thought  of  the 
dreary  after-life  of  the  poet,  which  has  no 
vital  interest  to  any  one  except  as  an  illustra- 
tion of  prolonged  failure  due  to  many  causes, 
but  not  less  to  a  lack  of  mental  than  of  moral 
self-government.  He  infiltrated  a  peculiar 
intellectual  life  into  the  clergy  of  his  time, 
but  in  them  it  came  to  nothing  more  tan- 
gible and  permanent  than  in  himself.  Will 
it  be  long  before  Carlyle's  picture  of  the 
Seer  at  Highgate  will  be  the  only  supple- 
ment to  The  Ancient  Mariner,  so  far  as  the 
general  knowledge  of  Coleridge  is  concerned, 
and  all  between  nothing  but  the  weariness  of 
the  opium-eater's  hiding  ? 


264       BEAUMONT,  COLERIDGE,  ETC. 

Perhaps  the  serenity  of  Wordsworth's 
home  at  Grasmere  gains  by  the  miserable 
contrast.  Thither  Coleridge  came  for  in- 
vigoration ;  thither,  when  he  finally  sepa- 
rated from  his  wife,  he  brought  or  sent  the 
children  ;  and  when  he  could  not  or  would 
not  retire  to  the  hospitality  and  pleasant 
companionship  of  the  household  where  he 
found  the  feminine  sympathy  which  he  had 
failed  of  in  his  own  marriage,  Wordsworth 
would  set  out  to  visit  him  with  moral 
support  and  cheer.  A  different  interest 
united  Wordsworth  and  Sir  George  Beau- 
mont ;  it  was  the  love  of  nature.  Landscape 
was  the  subject  of  their  thoughts.  Sir 
George  painted  it,  Wordsworth  poetized  it ; 
in  the  life  of  both  it  was  a  permanent  re- 
source to  which  they  constantly  resorted, 
and  they  liked  to  blend  their  work  in  this 
solvent  —  the  pictures  of  the  one  becoming 
a  text  'for  the  poems  of  the  other,  and  vice 
versa.  The  interest  Wordsworth  felt  in 
landscape  gardening,  in  modifying  wild  na- 
ture, and  his  ideas  regarding  the  methods 
and  aims  of  the  art,  are  brought  out  by  the 
part  he  had  in  planning  the  grounds  at  Cole- 
orton.  Sir  George  rebuilt  these,  and,  in 
laying  out  the  winter  garden  in  particular, 


BEAUMONT,  COLERIDGE,  ETC.       265 

he  had  frequent  recourse  to  the  taste  of  his 
friend;  and  as  Wordsworth  was  that  year 
occupying  the  old  farmhouse  on  the  estate, 
the  business  of  thinking  out  and  overseeing 
this  work  was  at  once  diversion  and  restful 
employment  amid  his  poetic  labors.  He 
wrote  at  great  length  on  the  subject  to  Lady 
Beaumont,  and  laid  before  her  an  elaborate 
plain  full  of  ivy,  holly,  juniper,  yews,  open 
sunshine  glades,  flower-borders,  an  alley,  a 
bower,  a  spray-fountain,  a  quarry,  a  distant 
spire,  a  pool  with  two  gold-fish,  a  vine-clad 
old  cottage,  and  other  things  which  are  arti- 
ficial enough  in  the  reading,  but  in  reality 
seem  remarkably  well  fitted  to  mingle  the 
charm  of  cultivation  with  the  wildness  of 
the  evergreens,  and  make  a  sheltering  re- 
treat where  the  life  of  nature  would  linger 
longest  in  autumn  and  revive  earliest  in  the 
warm  sun. 

"Painters  and  poets,"  he  wrote,  "have 
had  the  credit  of  being  reckoned  the  fathers 
of  English  gardening,"  and  he  felt  thus  in 
the  line  of  succession  in  the  art.  It  is  most 
interesting  to  observe  how  he  obtains  sug- 
gestions from  the  poets,  and  makes  their 
Pegasus  plough  his  field.  He  was,  of  course, 
opposed  to  undue  interference  with  nature 


266       BEAUMONT,  COLERIDGE,  ETC. 

and  the  deformity  it  occasions,  and  also  to 
the  ostentation  of  the  wealth  or  station  of 
the  owner.  "  It  is  a  substitution  of  little 
things  for  great  when  we  would  put  a  whole 
country  into  a  nobleman's  livery,"  he  says 
with  spirit,  and,  declaring  that  the  laying 
out  of  grounds  is  a  liberal  art  not  unlike 
poetry  and  painting,  he  goes  on  to  pro- 
test against  the  monopoly  of  nature  by  the 
great  ones  of  the  earth,  upon  high  aesthetic 
grounds.  "  No  liberal  art,"  he  says,  "  aims 
merely  at  the  gratification  of  an  individual 
or  a  class ;  the  painter  or  poet  is  degraded 
in  proportion  as  he  does  so.  .  .  .  If  this 
be  so  when  we  are  merely  putting  together 
words  or  colors,  how  much  more  ought  the 
feeling  to  prevail  when  we  are  in  the  midst 
of  the  realities  of  things.  .  .  .  What,  then, 
shall  we  say  of  many  great  mansions  with 
their  unqualified  expulsion  of  human  crea- 
tures from  their  neighborhood,  happy  or 
not  —  houses  which  do  what  is  fabled  of 
the  upas  tree  — that  they  breathe  out  death 
and  desolation?"  These  strictures  on  the 
aristocratic  handling  of  land  he  continues 
for  some  pages  in  an  interesting  advocacy 
of  aesthetic  communism  —  still  a  suggestive 
topic.     This  sense  of  the  beauty  and  gran- 


BEAUMONT,  COLERIDGE,  ETC.       267 

deur  of  nature  as  a  universal  boon,  the  desire 
to  humanize  the  landscape  without  robbing 
it  of  its  own  essential  character  or  of  the 
minor  charms  of  its  native  wildness,  and  a 
great  delight  in  his  own  practical  work  of 
improving  rubbish  heaps,  old  walls,  and 
broken  ground  into  a  winter  retreat  of  sun- 
shine  and  evergreens  and  red-berried  vines, 
with  nooks  and  views  fit  for  a  poet's  walk, 
are  the  qualities  that  still  give  interest  to 
those  half  dozen  letters  about  planting  a 
waste  acre  of  land.  On  the  other  hand,  his 
genius,  in  which  susceptibility  to  nature  was 
so  dominating  a  principle,  seldom  finds  ex- 
pression in  the  prose  of  his  letters  with 
nearly  the  same  clearness  and  purity  as  in 
his  poems.  There  is  one  extract,  however, 
which  must  be  given,  of  a  city  scene  from 
the  country  poet :  — 

"  I  left  Coleridge  at  seven  o'clock  on  Sun- 
day morning  and  walked  towards  the  city 
in  a  very  thoughtful  and  melancholy  state 
of  mind.  I  had  passed  through  Temple  Bar 
and  by  St.  Dunstan's,  noticing  nothing,  and 
entirely  occupied  with  my  own  thoughts, 
when,  looking  up,  I  saw  before  me  the  ave- 
nue of  Fleet  Street,  silent,  empty,  and  pure 
white,  with  a  sprinkling  of  new-fallen  snow, 


268        BEAUMONT,  COLEBIDGE,  ETC. 

not  a  cart  or  a  carriage  to  obstruct  the  view, 
no  noise,  only  a  few  soundless  and  dusky 
foot-passengers  here  and  there.  You  re- 
member the  elegant  line  of  the  curve  of 
Ludgate  Hill  in  which  the  avenue  would 
terminate,  and  beyond,  and  towering  above 
it,  was  the  huge  and  majestic  form  of  St. 
Paul's,  solemnized  by  a  thin  veil  of  falling 
snow.  I  cannot  say  how  much  I  was  aif  ected 
at  this  unthought-of  sight  in  such  a  place, 
and  what  a  blessing  I  felt  there  is  in  habits 
of  exalted  imagination.  My  sorrow  was  con- 
trolled, and  my  uneasiness  of  mind — not 
quieted  and  relieved  altogether  —  seemed  at 
once  to  receive  the  gift  of  an  anchor  of  se- 
curity." 

This  is  not  poetry,  but  it  is  from  the  same 
pen  as  the  sonnet  on  Westminster  Bridge. 

Besides  this  taste  for  landscape,  a  special 
interest  was  taken  by  both  friends  in  what 
poetry  Wordsworth  was  composing  from 
time  to  time.  Wordsworth  again  expati- 
ates on  the  "  awful  truth  that  there  neither 
is,  nor  can  be,  any  genuine  enjoyment  of  po- 
etry among  nineteen  out  of  twenty  of  those 
persons  who  live,  or  wish  to  live,  in  the 
broad  light  of  the  world,"  that  is,  in  society ; 
and  again  defines  his  aims,  "  to  console  the 


BEAUMONT,  COLEBIDGE,  ETC.       269 

afflicted  ;  to  add  sunshine  to  daylight,  by 
making  the  happy  happier ;  to  teach  the 
young  and  the  gracious  of  every  age  to  see, 
to  think,  and  feel,  and  therefore  become, 
more  actively  and  securely  virtuous,"  etc. 
Here,  too,  are  the  calm  and  patient  con- 
fidence in  his  own  immortality,  a  serene 
foreknowledge  of  how  the  matter  would  end, 
though  there  are  some  dark  spots  in  his  pre- 
vision, as  when  he  says  that  "the  people 
would  love  Peter  Bell "  if  only  the  critics 
would  let  them.  It  appears,  too,  that  these 
poets  were  discreet  in  their  confidential  criti- 
cism of  each  other,  and  by  no  means  blind  to 
faults.  Wordsworth  notices  that  in  South- 
ey's  verse,  notwithstanding  picturesqueness 
and  romance  and  a  minor  touch  or  two, 
"  there  is  nothing  that  shows  the  hand  of 
the  great  master ; "  and  Coleridge,  with  all 
his  adoration  for  Wordsworth,  even  when 
declaring  that  he  regarded  the  tale  of  the 
ruined  cottage  in  the  Excursion  as  "the 
finest  poem  in  our  language,  comparing  it 
with  any  of  the  same  or  similar  length," 
could  yet  put  his  finger  on  the  very  centre 
of  weakness  in  Wordsworth.  "  I  have  some- 
times fancied,"  he  says,  "  that,  having  by  the 
conjoint  operation   of  his  own  experiences, 


270        BEAUMONT,  COLERIDGE,  ETC. 

feelings,  and  reason  himself  convinced  him- 
self of  truths  which  the  generality  of  peo- 
ple have  either  taken  for  granted  from  their 
infancy,  or  at  least  adopted  in  early  life,  he 
has  attached  all  their  own  depth  and  weight 
to  doctrines  and  words  which  come  almost 
as  truisms  or  commonplace  to  others." 

Wordsworth's  last  words  are  a  farewell ; 
they  illustrate  how  the  love  of  nature  and 
enjoyment  of  it,  unlike  most  of  youthful 
emotions,  gain  an  increasing  glow  with  years, 
and  they  express  his  faith  and  life  in  the 
most  elementary  terms :  "I  never  had  a 
higher  relish  for  the  beauties  of  nature  than 
during  this  spring,  nor  enjoyed  myself  more. 
What  manifold  reason,  my  dear  George, 
have  you  and  I  had  to  be  thankful  to  Provi- 
dence !  Theologians  may  puzzle  their  heads 
about  dogmas  as  they  will ;  the  religion  of 
gratitude  cannot  mislead  us.  Of  that  we 
are  sure,  and  gratitude  is  the  handmaid  to 
hope,  and  hope  the  harbinger  of  faith.  I 
look  abroad  upon  nature,  I  think  of  the  best 
part  of  our  species,  I  lean  upon  my  friends, 
and  I  meditate  upon  the  Scriptures,  espe- 
cially the  Gospel  of  St.  John  ;  and  my  creed 
rises  up  of  itself  with  the  ease  of  an  exhala- 
tion, yet  a  fabric  of  adamant.  God  bless 
you,  my  ever  dear  friend." 


THREE  MEN  OF  PIETY 

I.    BUNYAN. 

The  word  genius  is  often  used  to  conceal 
a  puzzle  which  the  critic,  through  defects  of 
analytic  power  or  sympathetic  insight,  is  un- 
able to  solve ;  but  perhaps  this  short  and  easy 
method  was  never  more  feebly  resorted  to 
than  when  a  writer,  with  a  strong  prejudice 
in  favor  of  sweetness  and  light,  described 
Bunyan  as  a  "  Philistine  of  genius."  In  this 
designation  there  is  much  darkness  and  some 
acerbity.  The  wonderful  thing  about  this 
man  was  not  so  much  his  gifts  as  the  strange 
combination  of  them.  There  must  be,  of 
course,  something  extraordinary  in  any  com- 
mon man  who  becomes  a  leader  in  the  higher 
life  of  the  race.  The  history  of  the  Church, 
however,  is  starred  with  the  names  of  the 
ignorant  and  the  humble  who,  since  the  fish- 
ermen were  called  from  their  nets  by  Gali- 
lee, have  been  chosen  to  be  shepherds  of  the 
flock  and  evangelists  of  the  faith.  Bunyan 
was  visited  with  the  experience  of  Protes- 

271 


272  THREE  MEN  OF  PIETY. 

tant  Christendom,  of  which  the  successive 
terras  are  an  outraged  conscience,  an  of- 
fended God,  and  a  miraculous  pardon,  and 
when  he  came  to  his  peace  he  spread  the 
glad  news,  acceptably  to  the  pious,  and  con- 
vincingly to  the  impenitent ;  but  tens  of 
thousands  in  Christian  lands  have  passed 
through  that  same  strait  gate,  and  hundreds 
of  them  have  discovered  that  they  possessed 
the  gift  of  tongues.  Had  Bunyan  done  no 
more  his  sermons  would  have  turned  to  yel- 
low dust  long  ago,  and  his  memory  would  be 
treasured  only  by  a  sect,  for,  eloquent  as  he 
was,  he  was  not  one  of  the  missionaries  who 
are  world-famous.  He  wrote  a  book;  and 
it  turned  out  that  this  book  of  an  unedu- 
cated man  was  a  great  literary  classic.  Had 
he  written  an  epic  it  would  have  seemed  less 
marvelous,  because  there  is  a  popular  super- 
stition that  nature  makes  poets,  but  in  prose 
does  not  enter  into  competition  with  the 
common  school.  Bunyan  wrote  verses,  it  is 
true,  and  the  man  who  set  the  delectable 
mountains  on  the  rim  of  earth  had  the  mag- 
ical sight ;  but  just  as  surely  his  doggerel 
shows  that  he  had  not  the  singing  voice. 
He  was  a  master  of  prose,  and  wrote  a  book 
that  neighbors  the  Bible  in  our  religious 
homes. 


TUBEE  MEN  OF  PIETY.  273 

Two  things  are,  of  course,  indispensable 
to  a  boy  of  genius,  —  imagination  and  the 
gift  of  expression.  Now  Bunyan  was  fond 
of  representing  himself  as  very  wicked  in 
youth ;  and  so  he  was,  from  his  own  point 
of  view.  The  worst  he  can  say  for  himself 
is,  that  he  lied  and  swore,  without  malice  or 
injury  to  others,  but  because  he  had  a  talent 
for  tales  and  oaths.  It  is  not  trifling  to  re- 
mark that  his  powers  of  invention  and  forci- 
ble Saxon  speech  appear  to  have  found  their 
first  channel  in  this  sort  of  mental  activity. 
The  possible  openings  for  the  development 
of  genius  in  the  tinker's  cottage  at  Bedford 
were  few.  It  is  plain  that  the  mind  of  the 
young  man  was  one  of  intense  life,  and,  in 
the  lack  of  guidance  and  knowledge,  wan- 
dered at  random  or  turned  to  feed  upon  it- 
self. The  only  intellectual  or  moral  ideas 
that  came  to  him  were  conveyed  from  the 
Bible,  mostly  through  the  medium  of  the 
parish  church  in  the  years  of  the  Puritan 
ascendency.  The  commonplace  that  the  Bi- 
ble affords  a  good  education,  especially  on 
the  imaginative  and  moral  sides,  is  true,  and 
the  theology  that  attaches  to  it  has  devel- 
oped strong  intellects  ;  it  was,  in  the  end, 
the  total  book-culture  of  Bunyan,  —  all  that 


274  THEEE  MEN  OF  PIETY. 

he  knew  of  that  vast  and  various  world. 
But  in  the  primary  classes  it  is  not  a  simple 
text-book  of  life,  especially  for  a  boy  of  ge- 
nius who  is  all  sense,  all  spirit.  Bunyan  in 
after  years  did  not  regret  his  first  lessons ; 
he  preached  that  children  should  be  taught 
the  terrors  of  the  law.  Certainly  his  own 
mind  laid  hold  of  the  easily  apprehended 
images  of  threatened  vengeance,  and  was 
filled  with  vague  alarm  and  driven  to  a  tor- 
turing scrutiny  of  his  own  spirit.  The  ex- 
perience of  conversion  repeats  in  the  indi- 
vidual the  religious  history  of  the  race  in 
the  same  order  in  which  it  is  developed  in 
the  evolution  of  Biblical  thought  itself,  and 
Bunyan's  case  was  not  substantially  differ- 
ent from  that  of  others,  Puritan  or  Catholic, 
to  whom  there  is  no  Calvary  without  a  Sinai. 
The  peculiarity  lay  in  the  soil  into  which 
this  fiery  seed  was  sown.  His  imagination 
ceased  its  childish  fabling  and  became  vis- 
ionary; he  saw,  as  the  eye  sometimes  will, 
his  mind-pictures,  and  this  the  more  readily 
because  his  uneducated  mind  was  accus- 
tomed to  move  through  concrete  ideas,  and 
hence  would  be  characterized  by  a  high  vis- 
ualizing power.  That  this  was  a  marked 
trait  of  his  mental  habit  is  shown  by  the 


THREE  MEN  OF  PIETY.  275 

fact  that  all  his  stories  about  himself  are 
localized  in  a  distinctly  remembered  place. 

At  this  stage  his  mind  approached  the 
danger  -  line  of  religions  madness :  his  de- 
scriptions of  his  moods,  of  his  despairs,  and 
of  his  struggles  with  fancies,  whose  impor- 
tance to  his  intellectual  life  arose  from  the 
fewness  of  his  ideas  and  the  limited  field  of 
their  play,  show  that  he  had  no  power  over 
his  thoughts,  that  he  had  not  learned  to  use 
his  will  in  thinking.  This  objectivity  of  his 
religious  experience  and  his  powerlessness 
before  it,  which  have  been  recorded  of  other 
intense  lives  likewise,  gave  him  a  strong 
sense  of  the  reality  of  spiritual  things  ;  and 
when  he  at  last  had  laid  his  doubts  and 
come  into  the  calm,  he  kept  this  conviction 
to  such  a  degree  that  earthly  matters,  even 
when  religion  was  largely  interested  in  poli- 
tics, seemed  of  no  consequence :  this  world 
was  the  dream,  and  the  next  world  the  truth. 
To  our  days  the  account  of  this  conversion 
seems  to  indicate  a  lack  of  sanity,  a  spirit 
touched  with  the  fever  that  ends  in  fanat- 
icism ;  but  we  may  be  sure  that  to  his  hear- 
ers there  was  nothing  incredible  in  it,  noth- 
ing that  could  not  be  paralleled  out  of  what 
they  had  known  in  themselves  or  heard  from 


276  THREE  MEN  OF  PIETY. 

their  neighbors.  So,  early  in  life,  the  plot 
of  his  career  was  brought  to  its  crisis.  In 
this  faith  in  the  reality  of  eternal  things 
his  mind  reached  its  growth,  and  afterward 
knew  no  change. 

But  with  this  sure  hold  on  the  spirit  and 
its  high  concerns  there  went  a  perfect  real- 
ism. Bunyan  was  the  opposite  of  a  mystic. 
His  common  sense  in  his  sermons  of  advice 
is  extraordinarily  close -packed  and  hard, 
and  exhibits  acute  observation  of  the  ways 
of  human  nature  in  practical  life.  He  wrote 
once  what  was  almost  a  novel,  a  history  of 
one  Mr.  Badman,  which  is  probably  truer 
to  contemporary  life  than  the  adventures  of 
Jonathan  Wild  in  the  next  century.  If  he 
did  not  weaken  his  eyesight  over  books,  he 
sharpened  it  on  men  and  women.  All  his 
volumes  abound  with  anecdotes  and  inci- 
dents which  he  had  evidently  seen  in  the 
town  streets  or  by  the  roadside,  and  with 
phrases  and  proverbial  sayings  close  to  the 
soil.  Not  the  least  agreeable  of  the  signs 
of  this  realism,  this  sight  for  the  bare  fact 
in  sense  alone,  are  those  descriptions  of  the 
country,  of  the  birds,  and  flowers,  and  fields, 
and  the  simple  cheerfulness  of  them  to  the 
country-born  boy,  which  strew  his  pages  from 


THREE  MEN  OF  PIETY.  277 

cover  to  cover.  So,  when  he  came  to  write 
his  great  book,  he  united  in  a  perfectly  nat- 
ural way,  and  without  forethought,  the  real- 
ity of  a  journey  on  earth  with  that  of  the 
search  for  heaven.  The  success  with  which, 
in  a  literary  work,  truth  is  fused  with  fact, 
is  a  measure  of  genius.  It  is,  perhaps,  more 
striking  in  this  case  because  the  work  is  an 
allegory,  which  is  usually  so  drearily  pale  a 
kind  of  composition.  The  characters  and 
action  of  the  Pilgrim's  Progress,  on  the  con- 
trary, are  a  transcript  of  life,  so  vivid  that 
it  cannot  wear  out.  It  is  not  more  real- 
istic, however,  than  other  portions  of  Bun- 
yan's  voluminous  writings,  in  which  one 
may  get  an  idea  of  English  provincial  char- 
acter of  high  historical  value  and  human 
interest.  How  close,  how  truthful  to  his 
surroundings  he  was  as  a  literary  workman, 
is  brought  home  with  great  force,  though 
perhaps  unconsciously,  by  the  view  which 
his  biography  gives  of  Bedford  things  and 
people. 

From  it  one  may  reconstruct  the  religious 
state  of  the  poor  people  of  the  Lincoln  dio- 
cese in  Bunyan's  time,  and  bring  very  near 
the  look  of  the  lowly  life  which  was  the  orig- 
inal soil  of   Eno-lish  dissent  and   the  field 


278  THREE  MEN  OF  PIETY. 

of  the  tinker  -  preacher's  labors.  In  read- 
ing terse  extracts  from  the  old  documents  — 
"  short  and  simple  annals  of  the  poor,"  truly 
—  of  prayers  in  the  barn  and  fines  in  the 
court  -  house,  of  levies  on  workmen's  tools 
and  old  women's  chattels,  of  these  families 
of  "  the  meanest  sort,"  as  the  Bishop's  sched- 
ule calls  them,  whose  petty  share  of  poverty 
was  confiscated  for  the  security  of  a  Stuart 
throne  and  an  Anglican  prayer-book,  —  in 
reading  of  these  things,  a  chapter  of  the  his- 
tory of  the  English  people  comes  out  which 
has  been  too  closely  written  over  with  the 
wit  and  frolic  of  Charles's  court ;  and  the 
query  as  to  what  became  of  the  Common- 
wealth when  Cromwell  died  does  not  seem  so 
wholly  unanswerable  as  the  silence  of  stand- 
ard history  on  the  point  would  indicate. 

After  all,  one  is  almost  inclined  to  say 
that  no  man  ever  owed  more  than  Bunyan  to 
his  limitations.  Within  his  bounds,  he  used 
all  his  spiritual  and  earthly  experience,  and, 
aided  by  a  native  gift  of  imagination  and  of 
fluency  in  the  people's  speech,  blended  them, 
and  poured  the  full  fountain  of  his  life 
through  his  books.  Had  his  youth  included 
other  powerful  elements  of  emotion  and 
knowledge  besides  his  conversion,  had  theol- 


THREE  MEN  OF  PIETY.  279 

ogy,  or  learning,  or  wider  duties  removed 
him  somewhat  more  from  the  life  of  his 
neighbors  and  friends  and  the  folk  of  the 
diocese,  of  which  he  was  jestingly  called  the 
"  bishop,"  he  might  have  found  so  complete 
self-expression  a  more  difficult  task.  As  it 
was,  he  told  all  he  had  to  tell,  —  told  the 
highest  truth  in  the  commonest  words  and 
made  it  current.  It  is  curious  to  observe 
that  he  exhibits  no  consciousness  that  he  is 
writing  a  great  work ;  he  speaks  of  a  rush 
of  thought  and  fancy,  and  an  attractiveness 
in  the  subject,  but  he  does  not  seem  to  think 
that  he  is  doing  more  than  adding  another 
to  the  two-score  publications  he  has  already 
sent  out.  It  is  noticeable,  too,  that  he  did 
not  meditate  upon  it  for  years  beforehand, 
nor  spend  more  than  a  few  months  in  its 
composition.  Some  passages  were  added  at 
a  later  time,  but  as  a  whole  it  was  a  spon- 
taneous and  rapid  composition.  The  reason 
is  that  he  was  ripe  for  it.  Without  know- 
ing it,  he  had  been  working  up  to  this 
crowning  book,  both  in  thought,  treatment, 
and  style,  through  many  years  of  sincere 
and  straightforward,  face-to-face  conversa- 
tion with  men  and  women  whom  he  was  en- 
deavoring  to   guide  in   the  way  which  he 


280  THREE  MEN  OF  PIETY. 

had  traveled.  Pilgrim's  Progress  has  been 
called  the  last  book  that  was  written  without 
the  fear  of  the  reviewer ;  it  is  of  more  conse- 
quence that  it  is  one  of  the  few  works  that 
have  been  composed  without  ambition. 

Bunyan's  memory  is  singularly  agreeable. 
Personally  he  was  free  from  the  defects  of 
assumption,  dogmatism,  and  spiritual  pride, 
which  entered  largely  into  the  religious  char- 
acter of  his  epoch,  and  his  sensitive  con- 
science seems  to  have  kept  him  humble  after 
he  had  won  a  name.  The  two  great  ele- 
ments of  his  work  —  the  homely  quality  and 
the  Christian  quality  —  were  deep-seated  in 
his  nature,  and  give  him  charm.  In  an  age 
of  sectaries  he  was  not  a  narrow  bigot,  and 
did  not  stickle  for  meaningless  things  ;  and 
in  a  time  of  political  strife,  growing  out  of 
religious  diiferences,  and  though  himself  a 
sufferer  by  twelve  years'  imprisonment  in 
early  manhood,  he  did  not  confuse  heaven 
with  any  fantastic  monarchy  or  common- 
wealth of  Christ  in  London,  nor  show  any 
rancor  or  revengeful  spirit  as  a  subject.  It 
is  worth  remembering  that  out  of  Puritan- 
ism, which  is  regarded  as  a  narrow  creed 
and  life,  came  the  only  book  since  the  Ref- 
ormation which  has  been  acceptable  to  the 


THREE  MEN  OF  PIETY.  281 

whole  of  Christendom,  and  is  still  regarded 
as  the  substantial  truth  of  the  Christian  life 
in  all  tlie  churches  that  preach  it  under  any 
creed  of  orthodoxy.  The  life  of  the  man 
who  could  evolve  such  a  story  must  have 
been  very  simply  typical  of  the  Christian 
life  itself.  "  A  Philistine  of  genius  "  —  is 
there  no  light  nor  sweetness  in  this  ? 

II.    COWPER. 

The  career  of  Cowper,  as  all  the  world 
knows,  was  one  to  fill  the  pessimist  with 
perennial  gladness ;  and,  in  fact,  if  it  were 
possible  to  look  at  the  natural  order  of 
things  only  as  Cowper  was  affected  thereby, 
it  might  seem  that  nothing  short  of  malignity 
in  the  overruling  powers  could  account  for 
the  fiat  that  gave  up  so  pure,  simple,  and 
cordial  a  nature  to  be  the  prey  of  the  seven 
devils,  and  rendered  so  many  delightful 
traits  of  character  futile  to  achieve  the  hap- 
piness of  their  unfortunate  possessor.  In  his 
letters,  flowing  on  in  the  old,  sweet,  fresh 
English,  one  perceives  the  rare  literary  fac- 
ulty, the  shy  humor,  the  discrimination,  the 
sound  sense,  all  the  many  graces  of  style 
and  many  virtues  of  intrinsic  worth,  that 
have  long  been  familiar  to  scholars ;  and, 


282  THREE  MEN  OF  PIETY. 

more  than  that,  one  gladly  recognizes  again 
the  companionable,  soft-hearted,  pathetic  man 
whose  pastimes,  whether  in  gardening,  or 
poetry,  or  caring  for  his  pets,  were  a  refuge 
from  the  most  poignant  anguish  ;  who  played 
only  to  escape  his  terror,  and  at  last  failed 
even  in  that.  The  piety  of  Cowper's  life, 
however,  although  it  contributes  to  his  poetic 
attractiveness,  is  only  a  small  part  of  what 
must  be  dealt  with  by  the  observer  of  that 
life  as  it  appears  in  his  familiar  letters. 
These,  as  a  body,  it  is  needless  to  say,  hold 
a  place  from  which  they  are  not  likely  to  be 
dislodged.  Nevertheless,  letters  at  the  best 
are  not  a  high  form  of  literature ;  even 
when,  as  in  the  present  case,  their  workman- 
ship entitles  them  to  rank  as  classics,  their 
interest  must  finally  reside  in  their  being 
unconscious  autobiography  rather  than  in 
their  artistic  perfection.  Hence,  instead  of 
regarding  this  correspondence  as  an  object 
of  literary  virtu,  it  may  be  well  for  once  '  to 
consider  it  with  a  more  direct  reference  to 
the  sober  facts  it  chronicles  and  the  spirit  it 
reveals. 

Few  persons  experienced  in  the  world 
would  be  likely  to  hold  up  the  routine  of 
Cowper's  days  as  worthy  of  imitation.     So 


THREE  MEN  OF  PIETY.  283 

far  as  earthly  matters  were  involved,  it  was 
a  life  o£  very  small  things  ;  its  mundane  in- 
terests were  few  and  trivial,  and  sprang  for 
the  most  part  out  of  pursuits  that  belong 
usually  either  to  the  domain  of  childhood  or 
of  invalidism.  This  is  not  said  disparag- 
ingly, but  with  due  regard  to  the  fact  that 
for  the  larger  part  of  his  career  Cowper's 
condition  was  such  that  his  attention  had  to 
be  distracted  and  his  mind  amused,  as  is  the 
case  with  children  or  invalids.  In  his  later 
years  the  composition  of  verses  became  one 
mode  of  such  diversion,  and  was  undertaken 
practically  as  a  sanitary  measure  ;  and  thus 
his  larger  interests,  involving  conceptions  of 
the  eternal  world  and  sympathy  with  his  fel- 
low-men, were  extended  to  his  hours  of  re- 
creation. These  larger  interests,  as  they 
must  be  called,  were  from  the  first  peculiar. 
When  he  was  not  attending  to  his  hares  or 
his  vegetables,  or  versifying,  or  taking  rural 
walks,  he  was  engaged  in  devotional  exer- 
cises of  one  kind  or  another.  In  1766,  for 
example,  every  day  the  time  from  breakfast 
until  eleven  o'clock  was  spent  in  reading  the 
Bible  or  sermons,  or  in  religious  conversa- 
tion ;  the  hour  from  eleven  to  twelve  was 
passed  in  church  at  service ;  in  the  course  of 


284  THREE  MEN  OF  PIETY. 

the  afternoon  there  was  a  second  period  of 
religious  conversation  or  hymn-singing;  at 
niglit  there  was  commonly  another  sermon 
and  more  psalms,  and  after  that  family 
prayers.  In  other  words,  it  appears  that 
Cowper's  life,  at  that  time  at  least  (and  it 
is  a  fair  sample  of  the  whole),  consisted  of 
an  almost  monastic  religious  routine,  re- 
lieved by  the  diversion  of  country  pursuits 
on  a  small  scale,  and,  later,  of  literary  pur- 
suits in  addition.  At  present,  as  has  been 
said,  few  qualified  judges  would  consider  this 
a  life  of  high  order,  either  in  the  way  of 
wisdom  or  utility ;  but  in  Cowper's  case,  the 
peculiarity  of  his  mental  condition  and  the 
charm  of  his  nature,  revealed  at  its  happy 
moments  in  pleasant  letters,  blind  the  reader 
to  the  monotony  and  vapidity  of  this  exist- 
ence, for  such  were  its  characteristics,  except 
in  so  far  as  the  healing  influences  of  natural 
scenes,  to  which  Cowper  was  very  sensitive, 
and  the  kindness  of  his  household  friends, 
gave  it  variety  and  substance. 

Now,  it  is  a  very  striking  fact  that  while 
Cowper  spent  the  larger  part  of  his  time 
in  religious  reading  and  conversation,  and 
besides  meditated  in  private  on  the  same 
themes,  his  letters  do  not  show  in  any  degree 


THREE  MEN  OF  PIETY.  285 

that  insight  into  spiritual  things  which  would 
naturally  be  looked  for  from  real  genius 
occupied  with  such  subjects.  Spirituality 
should  have  been  his  trait  if  religion  was 
his  life,  but,  in  fact,  these  letters  are  in  this 
regard  barren.  The  anomalous  nature  of 
his  poetic  life  —  the  fact  that  he  used  his 
powers,  not  to  express  his  deepest  emotions, 
but  to  escape  from  them  —  may  be  pleaded 
in  extenuation  of  what  seems  at  first  a  sur- 
prising defect ;  but  a  more  likely  explana- 
tion lies  in  another  direction.  It  was  ser- 
jiions  that  he  read,  theology  that  he  talked 
about,  a  theory  of  grace  and  salvation  that 
he  meditated  upon  in  secret ;  his  religion 
occupied  his  thoughts  rather  than  his  acts, 
touched  his  future  rather  than  his  present, 
—  in  a  word,  it  was  a  system  rather  than  a 
life,  the  source  of  doubt  instead  of  inspira- 
tion. To  put  it  in  the  simplest  form,  he 
derived  his  light,  not  from  his  own  inner  ex- 
perience, but  from  the  creed.  In  his  case 
the  light  was  the  darkness  of  insanity  ;  but 
his  own  conviction  in  the  matter  is  shown 
in  his  characterization  of  Beattie,  —  "a  man 
whose  faculties  have  now  and  then  a  glimpse 
from  Heaven  upon  them,  a  man  not  indeed 
in  possession  of  much  evangelical  light,  but 


286  THREE  MEN  OF  PIETY. 

faitliful  to  what  he  has,  and  never  neglect- 
ing an  opportunity  to  use  it."  A  poet  who 
identifies  "  evangelical  light "  with  "  the  vis- 
ion and  the  faculty  divine  "  may  write  The 
Castaway,  but  one  is  not  likely  to  find  in 
his  works  those  intimate  revelations  of  truth 
that  flash  in  convincing  beauty  from  the 
lines  of  the  true  spiritualists,  such  as  Words- 
worth, Shelley,  or  Emerson.  Cowper's  mis- 
fortune, both  as  a  man  and  a  poet,  was  this 
substitution  of  dogma  for  instinct,  which, 
operating  in  so  sensitive  and  feeble  a  nature, 
made  religion,  which  was  his  vital  interest, 
not  a  life  but  a  disease,  and  gave  to  the 
activities  of  his  higher  powers  the  character 
of  mania.  It  is  misleading,  therefore,  to 
think  of  these  letters  as  the  fruit  of  a  deeply 
religious  mind ;  they  are  the  record  of  the 
efforts  of  a  creed-believing  mind  to  get  rid 
of  itself,  and  their  virtues  —  their  amiability, 
their  delight  in  small  adventures,  their  in- 
terest in  literature  and  humanity  —  exist  not 
in  consequence  of  but  in  spite  of  the  reli- 
aious  bent  of  their  author. 

Cowper  was  deficient,  too,  aesthetically  as 
well  as  spiritually,  and  the  character  of  his 
limitations  was  much  the  same  in  both  re- 
spects.    His  sense  of  beauty  was  practically 


THREE  MEN  OF  PIETY.  287 

confined  to  landscape  and  small  animals. 
The  cramping  influences  amid  which  he 
lived  are  well  indicated  by  his  remarks  upon 
a  clergyman  who,  it  should  be  said,  richly 
deserved  censure :  — 

"He  seems,  together  with  others  of  our 
acquaintance,  to  have  suffered  considerably 
in  his  spiritual  character  by  his  attachment 
to  music.  The  lawfulness  of  it,  when  used 
with  moderation,  and  in  its  proper  place,  is 
unquestionable ;  but  I  believe  that  wine  it- 
self, though  a  man  be  guilty  of  habitual  in- 
toxication, does  not  more  debauch  and  befool 
the  natural  understanding  than  music  —  al- 
ways music,  music  in  season  and  out  of  sea- 
son —  weakens  and  destroys  the  spiritual 
discernment.  If  it  is  not  used  with  an  un- 
feigned reference  to  the  worship  of  God, 
and  with  a  design  to  assist  the  soul  in  the 
performance  of  it,  which  cannot  be  the  case 
when  it  is  the  only  occupation,  it  degener- 
ates into  a  sensual  delight,  and  becomes  a 
most  powerful  advocate  for  the  admission  of 
other  pleasures,  grosser,  perhaps,  in  degree, 
but  in  their  kind  the  same." 

Whatever  truth  there  may  be  in  this  es- 
timate of  the  influence  of  music,  the  limita- 
tion of  its  use  to  church  choirs  and  organs 


288  THREE  MEN  OF  PIETY. 

is  an  expression  of  Puritan  iconoclasm  which 
acquaints  the  reader  at  once  with  Cowper's 
provincialism.  The  passage  is  English  to 
the  core,  and  not  only  does  it  suggest  the 
jEsthetic  deficiencies  of  the  poet  and  his  life, 
but  it  also  brings  up  once  more  the  charac- 
teristic English  picture  of  the  family  sing- 
ing psalms  and  reading  sermons,  year  in, 
year  out,  with  which  the  letters  begin.  This 
correspondence  has  made  that  group  of  in- 
terest to  the  world;  but  in  answer  to  the 
question,  What  was  its  life  and  its  spirit, 
can  one  help  feeling  that  trivial,  not  to 
say  belittling,  occupations,  and  a  nar-^owing 
theology,  were  principal  elements?  Cow- 
per's work,  in  the  main,  has  only  the  slug- 
gish vitality  of  this  life ;  in  his  letters  more 
than  in  his  verses,  speaking  generally,  there 
is  literary  grace  and  personal  charm ;  but  in 
both  they  seem  a  sort  of  salvage.  A  vision 
of  quiet  green  fields,  inhabited  by  respec- 
table gentlefolk  who  led  an  existence  of 
humble  routine  in  a  neighboi'ly  way,  made 
up  Cowper's  world ;  he  lived  in  it  over- 
shadowed by  the  ever  present  fear  of  dam- 
nation, and  at  last,  sunk  in  despair,  he  died 
in  it.  Out  of  such  a  world  no  great  poet 
either  of  the  soul  or  of  nature  could  come. 


THREE  MEN  OF  PIETY.  289 

Cowper's  virtue  was  in  his  simplicity  and 
genuineness,  rare  qualities  then ;  his  good 
fortune  was  in  never  belonging  to  the  liter- 
ary set  or  bowing  to  the  town  taste ;  hence 
in  a  time  the  most  barren  in  English  litera- 
ture, he  gave  us  a  half  dozen  fine  poems  that 
stand  far  beyond  all  contemporary  rivalry, 
and  some  private  letters  of  the  best  style 
and  temper.  When,  however,  the  question 
comes  as  to  the  intrinsic  value  of  these  let- 
ters, it  must  be  confessed  that  though  they 
please  the  taste  they  do  not  interest  the  mind 
except  in  a  curious  and  diverting  way.  They 
are  less  the  letters  of  a  poet  than  of  a  village 
original,  a  sort  of  schoolmaster  or  clergyman 
maiiqiie^  of  sound  sense,  tender  heart,  and 
humane  perception,  but  the  creature  of  a 
narrow  sphere. 

III.    CHANNING. 

Channing  was  the  chief  ornament  of  the 
American  pulpit  in  his  day.  Like  nearly 
all  men  illustrious  in  the  religious  life,  he 
has  won  a  kindlier  and  wider  regard  by  his 
character  than  by  his  opinions,  because  the 
moods  of  devotion  are  simple  and  are  uni- 
versal in  human  nature,  while  opinion  in 
theology  is  more  variable  and  eccentric,  and 


290  THREE  MEN  OF  PIETY. 

in  some  degree  more  accidental,  than  in  any 
other  branch  of  speculation.  The  deepest 
interest  of  his  life  lies  not  so  much  in  the 
fruit  of  his  genius  as  in  the  light  of  his 
spirit.  Indeed,  this  acknowledgment  is 
wrapped  up  in  the  indiscriminate  eulogy  by 
which  his  admirers  have  injured  his  fame, 
for  they  have  presented  him  as  a  saint  rather 
than  as  a  thinker,  as  an  example  of  ideal 
living  rather  than  as  a  finder  of  truth.  To 
put  a  man  in  the  catalogue  of  saints  is 
merely  to  write  his  epitaph ;  his  life  is  the 
main  thing,  and  Channing,  although  his 
biography  records  no  great  deeds  in  the 
world  and  no  great  crises  of  inner  expe- 
rience, is  not  alone  in  being  far  more  inter- 
esting in  his  humanity  than  in  his  canoniza- 
tion. A  refined  and  sensitive  childhood, 
shadowed  in  some  partially  explained  way, 
so  that  he  never  remembered  it  as  a  period 
of  joyfulness,  was  followed  by  a  spirited  and 
dreaming  youth,  caught  by  the  fervors  of 
French  revolutionary  ideas  and  exalted  by 
its  own  noble  motives.  In  those  early  years, 
as  well  as  in  his  late  maturity,  he  expe- 
rienced, on  the  beach  at  Newport  and  under 
the  willows  at  Cambridge,  moments  of  in- 
sight and  impulse  which  stood  out  ever  after 


THREE  MEN  OF  PIETY.  291 

in  his  memory  as  new  births  of  the  spirit 
prophetic  of  the  future.  His  career  was  es- 
pecially determined,  however,  by  the  twenty- 
one  months  which  he  passed  at  Richmond 
as  a  private  tutor,  immediately  after  leaving 
college.  There,  in  loneliness  and  poverty, 
in  stoical  disregard  of  health  and  courting 
privation,  in  Christian  conscientiousness  of 
motive,  led  on  by  glowing  reveries  in  which 
visionary  objects  seemed  realities  within 
reach,  he  devoted  himself  in  written  words 
to  the  service  of  mankind  by  the  instrumen- 
talities of  religion.  It  is  painful  to  read  the 
narrative  of  this  intense  personal  life  in  the 
years  most  susceptible  to  enthusiasm  for  re- 
mote and  ideal  ends  ;  there  can  be  no  won- 
der that  after  such  experience  he  returned 
home  with  the  seal  of  the  religious  life  set 
upon  his  soul,  and  with  a  body  inexorably 
condemned  to  life-long  disease.  He  entered 
upon  his  ministry  in  the  field  where  he  could 
best  do  good  and  find  peace  in  doing  it; 
morally  the  child  of  the  New  England  re- 
ligious spirit,  and  intellectually  the  disciple 
of  those  ideas  of  the  nature  of  humanity  and 
the  right  course  of  its  development  which 
the  French  Revolution  had  disseminated. 
Throughout  his  life  he  was  governed  mainlj^ 


292  THREE  MEN  OF  PIETY. 

by  a  deep  sense  of  tlie  dignity  of  manhood, 
under  whatever  form,  and  by  an  abiding 
conviction  of  the  aid  which  Christianity 
gives  to  the  imagination  and  heart  in  obey- 
ing the  rule  of  love  and  obtaining  perma- 
nent peace  of  mind. 

The  most  acute  criticism  ever  passed  upon 
Channing's  character  was  by  that  unnamed 
critic  who  said,  "  He  was  kept  from  the 
highest  goodness  by  his  love  of  rectitude." 
The  love  of  rectitude  was  his  predominant 
trait ;  he  was  enslaved  by  it.  He  exacted 
more  of  himself,  however,  than  of  others. 
Right  he  must  be,  at  all  hazards,  in  motive, 
opinion,  and  action.  It  is  melancholy  to 
read  page  after  page  of  his  self-examination, 
so  minute,  intricate,  and  painful,  so  fre- 
quent and  long  continued.  It  almost  awak- 
ens a  doubt  of  the  value  of  noble  character 
to  find  it  so  unsure  of  itself,  to  see  its  pos- 
sessor so  absorbed  in  hunting  his  own  shadow 
within  the  innermost  retreats  of  thought  and 
feeling.  Channing  seems  to  have  preached 
more  sermons  to  himself  than  to  the  world. 
His  love  of  rectitude  led  him  to  this  exces- 
sive conscientiousness,  but  it  brought  him 
great  good  in  other  directions.  It  gave  him 
a  respect  for  the  opinions  of  other  men  as 


THEEE  MEN  OF  PIETY.  293 

catholic  as  it  was  humble.  He  did  not 
practice  toleration  toward  them,  for  that  ex- 
pression implied  to  his  mind  a  misplaced 
self-confidence  ;  but  he  practiced  charity,  as 
toward  men  who  felt  equally  with  himself 
the  binding  force  of  the  obligation  to  be 
right,  and  who  had  an  equal  chance  of  find- 
ing truth.  His  conviction  of  the  universal- 
ity of  this  obligation  and  his  perception 
that  it  necessitates  the  independent  exercise 
of  individual  powers  encouraged  in  him  a 
remarkable  admiration  for  individuality,  for 
the  unhampered  exercise  of  thought  and  un- 
questioned obedience  to  motive  in  which  the 
richness  of  individual  life  consists. 

His  second  great  quality,  as  pervasive  and 
controlling  as  his  desire  to  be  right,  was 
sensibility.  It  was  revealed  in  the  sym- 
pathies and  affections  of  private  life,  which 
are  known  to  the  world  only  by  the  report 
of  friends  ;  but  it  may  be  seen  with  equal 
clearness  in  the  intensity  of  his  delight  in 
nature,  and  in  the  ardent  feeling  by  which 
he  realized  ideal  ends  and  gave  them  a  liv- 
ing presence  in  his  own  life  as  objects  of 
continuous  effort.  His  sensitiveness  to  nat- 
ural beauty  was  so  keen  that  in  moments  of 
physical  weakness  it  caused  pain.     "There 


294  THREE  MEN  OF  PIETY. 

are  times,"  he  wrote,  "  when  I  have  been  so 
feeble  that  a  glance  at  the  natural  land- 
scape, or  even  the  sight  of  a  beautiful  flower, 
gave  me  a  bodily  pain  from  which  I  shrank." 
As  life  drew  on  to  its  end,  the  indestructible 
loveliness  of  nature  became  to  him  a  source 
of  joy  and  peace  ever  more  prized.  "  The 
world  grows  younger  with  age ! "  he  ex- 
claimed more  than  once.  In  emotional  sus- 
ceptibility to  ideas  he  resembled  Shelley, 
and  probably  it  was  this  likeness  of  feeling 
which  led  him  to  call  Shelley,  in  ministerial 
language,  but  with  extraordinary  charity  for 
that  age,  "  a  seraph  gone  astray."  He  re- 
tained through  life  the  intellectual  sympa- 
thies of  his  youth,  and  in  his  last  days  still 
had  an  inclination  toward  community  of 
property  as  the  solution  of  the  social  prob- 
lem ;  like  Wordsworth  and  Southey  he  re- 
coiled from  the  excesses  of  the  French,  but 
he  never  gave  up  the  tricolor  for  the  white 
cockade.  In  his  generation  nearly  all  men 
were  hopeful  of  the  accomplishment  of  be- 
neficent reforms ;  but  Channing  was  filled 
with  an  enthusiasm  of  hope  which  was  al- 
most the  fervor  of  conviction.  He  was 
without  that  practical  enthusiasm  which  is 
aroused  by  the  presence  of  great  deeds  im- 


THREE  MEN  OF  PIETY.  295 

mediately  to  be  done  ;  the  objects  for  which 
he  worked  were  far  in  the  distance,  scarcely 
discernible  except  from  the  mount  of  vision ; 
but  he  was  possessed  by  the  enthusiasm 
which  is  kindled  by  the  heat  of  thought 
and  is  wrapped  in  its  own  solitary  flames, 
and  he  lived  under  the  bright  zenith  of 
that  mood  of  which  Carlyle  has  shown  the 
dark  nadir  and  Teufelsdroch  standing  in  its 
shadow  gazing  out  over  the  sleeping  city. 
These  three  principles  —  rectitude,  sensibil- 
ity, enthusiasm  —  were  elemental  in  Chan- 
ning's  nature ;  and  because  they  are  moral, 
and  not  intellectual,  he  lived  a  spiritual 
rather  than  a  mental  life ;  he  gained  in 
depth  rather  than  in  breadth,  and  worked 
out  his  development  by  contemplation  and 
prayer  rather  than  by  thought  and  act. 

It  appears  strange,  at  first,  that  a  man 
with  these  endowments  should  have  been 
so  conservative  in  opinion,  and  so  little  in- 
clined to  force  upon  the  world  what  ad- 
vanced opinions  he  did  hold.  A  lover  of 
truth  unwilling  to  make  proselytes,  an  en- 
thusiast unwilling  to  act,  seems  an  anom- 
aly ;  but  such  was  Channing's  position.  One 
cause  of  his  aversion  to  pushing  Unitarian- 
ism  to  its  conclusion  is  found  in  the  history 


296  TEREE  MEN  OF  PIETY. 

of  his  own  conversion  and  in  the  character 
of  his  attachment  to  the  new  faith ;  he  was 
a  revolter  of  the  heart ;  he  was  liberalized 
by  his  feelings.  "  My  inquiries,"  he  said, 
"  grew  out  of  the  shock  given  to  my  moral 
nature  by  the  popular  system  of  faith." 
He  was  moved  by  sentiment  in  his  rejec- 
tion of  Calvinism,  and  he  was  kept  by 
sentiment  from  giving  up  the  theory  of  the 
mysterious  character  and  mission  of  Christ. 
The  strength  of  his  feelings  ojjerated  to 
render  him  conservative,  and  the  low  es- 
timate he  apparently  placed  upon  logical 
processes  contributed  to  the  same  end.  "  It 
is  a  good  plan,"  he  wrote,  "  ever  and  anon 
to  make  a  clean  sweep  of  that  to  which  we 
have  arrived  by  logical  thought,  and  take  a 
new  view  ;  for  the  mind  needs  the  baptism 
of  wonder  and  hope  to  keep  it  vigorous  and 
healthy  for  intuition."  Either  this  distrust 
of  the  understanding  working  by  logical 
processes,  or  else  a  native  inaptitude  for 
theological  reasoning,  prevented  him  from 
following  out  his  principles  to  their  conclu- 
sion. If  he  had  framed  a  system,  he  would 
have  held  his  views  with  greater  certainty  ; 
as  it  was,  he  not  only  allowed  the  greatest 
liberty  to   individual   opinion,  but   he   dis- 


THESE  MEN  OF  PIETY.  297 

trusted  himself.  "  You  young  thinkers,"  he 
said,  "  have  the  advantage  of  us  in  coming 
without  superstitious  preoccupation  to  the 
words  of  Scripture,  and  are  more  likely  to 
get  the  obvious  meaning.  We  shall  walk  in 
shadows  to  our  graves,"  The  strength  of  in- 
bred sentiment  could  not  be  overpowered  by 
such  feeble  intellectual  conviction.  He  was  a 
moral,  not  an  intellectual,  reformer ;  his  work 
was  not  the  destruction  of  a  theology,  but  the 
spread  of  charity.  He  felt  more  than  he  rea- 
soned, and  hence  his  rationalism  was  bounded, 
not  by  the  unknown,  but  by  the  mystical.  He 
was  satisfied  with  this,  and  does  not  seem  to 
have  wished  to  make  a  definite  statement  of 
his  beliefs.  The  whole  matter  is  summed 
up  by  Miss  Peabody  when  she  says,  "  The 
Christianity  which  Dr.  Channing  believed 
.  .  .  was  a  spirit,  not  a  form  of  thought." 
A  spirit  of  devotion  toward  the  divine,  a 
spirit  of  love  toward  the  human,  Channing 
preached  to  the  world  and  illustrated  by  his 
life  ;  but  a  new  form  of  thought  which  shows 
the  intellectual  advance  that  alone  is  fatal 
to  conservatism,  —  this  was  no  part  of  his 
gift  to  men. 

In  the  antislavery  cause  his  conservatism 
appears  in  a  less  pleasing  light.     Here  he 


298  THREE  MEN  OF  PIETY. 

exhibited  the  scholar's  rekictance  to  initiate 
reform,  the  scholar's  perplexity  before  the 
practical  barriers  in  the  way  of  action.  He 
was  displeased  by  the  rude  voices  about  him, 
and  frightened  by  the  violence  of  determi- 
nation which  the  reformers  displayed.  He 
looked  to  find  the  peace  of  the  pulpit  in  the 
arena,  and  was  bewildered  by  the  alarms  of 
the  active  strife.  He  did  not  choose  his  side 
until  the  last  moment,  and  even  then  he  de- 
layed until  he  called  down  the  just  rebuke  of 
May  and  the  just  defense  that  reformer  made 
for  his  comrades :  "  The  children  of  Abra- 
ham held  their  peace  until  at  last  the  very 
stones  have  cried  out,  and  you  must  expect 
them  to  cry  out  like  the  stones."  Then,  in- 
deed, Channing  showed  that  he  was  a  Falk- 
land on  Cromwell's  side,  not  acting  without 
a  doubt,  but  taking  his  place,  nevertheless, 
openly  and  manfully  beside  the  friend  whom 
he  had  left  alone  too  long.  Yet  he  never  lost, 
even  in  that  stirring  cause,  the  timidity  of 
culture.  He  was  of  the  generation  of  those 
cultivated  men  who  earned  for  Boston  the 
reputation  for  intellectual  preeminence ;  but 
the  political  future  of  the  country  did  not 
belong  to  him  nor  to  his  companions  ;  it  be- 
longed  to  Garrison  and  Lincoln.     Here  it 


THREE  MEN  OF  PIETY.  299 

is  that  Father  Taylor's  keen  criticism  strikes 
home :  "  What  a  beautiful  beiug  Dr.  Chan- 
ning  is !  If  he  only  had  had  any  educa- 
tion !  "  Channing's  education  had  been  of 
the  lamp,  and  not  of  the  sword ;  it  seemed 
to  Father  Taylor  pitifully  narrow  and  palsy- 
stricken  beside  his  own  experience  of  the 
world's  misery.  Channing's  life  affords  one 
more  illustration  of  the  difficulty  the  culti- 
vated man  finds  in  understanding  and  for- 
warding reform  in  its  beginning ;  but  he 
deserves  the  credit  of  having  rid  himself  of 
the  prejudices  and  influences  that  marked 
the  society  in  which  he  moved,  to  a  greater 
degree,  perhaps,  than  any  other  of  his  circle. 
The  value  of  Channing's  work  in  religion 
and  in  reform  will  be  differently  rated  by 
men,  for  his  service  was  of  a  kind  which  is 
too  apt  to  be  forgotten.  The  intrinsic  worth 
of  his  writings  remains  to  be  tested  by  time ; 
but  their  historic  worth,  as  a  means  of  lib- 
eralizing the  New  England  of  his  day,  was 
great  and  memorable.  He  gave  his  right 
hand  to  Emerson  and  his  left  hand  to  Par- 
ker ;  and,  although  he  could  not  accompany 
them  on  the  way,  he  bade  them  Godspeed. 
It  was,  perhaps,  mainly  through  his  influ- 
ence that  they  found  the  field  prepared  for 


300  THREE  MEN  OF  PIETY. 

them  and  the  harvest  ready,  although  he 
would  not  put  his  sickle  in.  It  was  largely 
due  to  him,  also,  that  Boston  became  the 
philanthropic  centre  of  the  country.  Dur- 
ing his  lifetime  he  won  a  remarkable  respect 
and  admiration.  An  exaggerated  estimate 
of  his  eloquence,  powers,  and  influence  will 
continue  to  be  held  so  long  as  any  remain 
alive  who  heard  his  voice  and  remember  its 
accents ;  in  later  times  a  truer  judgment 
may  be  reached.  Personally  he  was  amia- 
ble, kindly,  and  courteous,  notwithstanding 
the  distance  at  which  he  seems  to  have  kept 
all  men.  Dr.  Walker  said  that  conversa- 
tion was  always  constrained  in  his  study. 
In  his  nephew's  narrative,  it  is  said  that  the 
interview  with  him  was  "  solemn  as  the  visit 
to  the  shrine  of  an  oracle."  He  himself 
told  Miss  Peabody  after  their  friendship 
had  lasted  several  years,  that  she  had  "  the 
awe  of  the  preacher  "  upon  her.  Finally, 
v/e  read  that  no  man  ever  freely  laid  his 
hand  upon  Channing's  shoulder;  and  we  won- 
der whether  he  ever  remembered  that  St. 
John  had  "  handled  the  Word  made  flesh." 
This  self-seclusion,  this  isolation  of  sanctity, 
as  it  were,  did  not  proceed  from  any  value 
he  set  upon  himself   above  his  fellows ;   it 


THREE  MEN  OF  PIETY.  301 

was  the  natural  failing  of  a  man  who  lived 
much  within  himself,  and  who  always  medi- 
tated the  loftiest  of  unworldly  themes.  He 
was  a  faithful  and  well-beloved  friend ;  and 
if  in  this,  as  in  other  directions,  he  "  failed 
of  the  highest  goodness,"  there  are  few  in 
the  same  walk  of  life  who  attain  to  equal 
sincerity,  charity,  and  purity,  or  equal  ser- 
viceableness  to  the  world. 


JOHN   GREENLEAF   WHITTIER. 

The  time  has  come  to  pay  tribute  of 
farewell  upon  the  occasion  of  the  death  of 
Whittier.  The  popular  instinct  which 
long  ago  adopted  him  as  the  poet  of  New 
England  is  one  of  those  sure  arbiters, 
superior  to  all  academic  judgments  upon 
the  literary  works  of  a  man,  which  confer 
a  rightful  fame  in  life,  and  justify  the  ex- 
pectation of  a  long  remembrance.  Whit- 
tier was  distinctly  a  local  poet,  a  New 
Englander;  but  to  acknowledge  this  does 
not  diminish  his  honor,  nor  is  he  thereby 
set  in  a  secondary  place.  His  locality, 
if  one  may  use  the  expression,  was  a 
country  by  itself;  its  inhabitants  were  a 
peculiar  people,  with  a  strongly  marked 
social  and  moral  character,  with  a  landt- 
scape  and  an  atmosphere,  with  historical 
traditions,  legends  often  romantic,  and  with 
strong  vitalizing  ideas.  There  was  some- 
thing more  than  a  literary  fancy  in  the 
naturalness  with  which  Whittier  sought  a 
kind  of  fellowship  with  Burns ;  there  was 

302 


JOHN    GREENLEAF    WEITTIER.     303 

a  true  resemblance  in  their  situation  as 
the  poets  of  their  own  kin  and  soil,  in 
their  reliance  upon  the  strength  of  the 
people  of  whom  they  were  born,  and  in 
their  cherished  attachment  to  the  places 
and  scenes  where  they  grew.  New  Eng- 
land, moreover,  had  this  advantage,  that  it 
was  destined  to  set  the  stamp  of  its  char- 
acter upon  the  larger  nation  in  which  it 
was  an  element;  so  that  if  Whittier  be 
regarded,  as  he  sometimes  is,  as  a  repre- 
sentative American  poet,  it  is  not  without 
justice.  He  is  really  national  so  far  as 
the  spirit  of  New  England  has  passed  into 
the  nation  at  large ;  and  that  vast  body  of 
Western  settlers  who  bore  New  England 
to  the  frontier,  and  yet  look  back  to  the  old 
homestead,  find  in  him  the  sentiment  of 
their  past.  There  can  be  little  question, 
too,  that  he  is  representative  of  a  far  larger 
portion  of  the  American  people  than  any 
other  of  the  elder  poets.  His  lack  of  the 
culture  of  the  schools  has  here  been  in  his 
favor,  and  has  brought  him  closer  to  the 
common  life;  he  is  more  democratic  than 
he  otherwise  might  have  been;  and  the 
people,  recognizing  in  him  their  own 
strain,  have  accepted  him  with  a  judgment 


304     JOHN    GREENLEAF    WHITTIER. 

as  valid  as  that  with  which  cultivated 
critics  accept  the  work  of  the  man  of 
genius  who  is  also  an  artist.  One  calls 
him  a  local  poet  rather  to  define  his  quali- 
ties than  to  characterize  his  range. 

The  New  England  which  Whittier  repre- 
sents has  now  become  historical.  The 
length  of  his  life  carried  him  beyond  his 
times.  It  is  plainer  now  than  it  was  at 
an  earlier  day  that  his  poems  are  one  of 
the  living  records  of  a  past  which  will  be 
of  perennial  interest  and  ever  held  in 
honor.  That  his  early  poetic  career  fell 
in  with  the  anti-slavery  movement  was  not 
a  misfortune  for  his  Muse;  the  man  fed 
upon  it,  and  drew  therefrom  an  iron 
strength  for  the  moral  nature  which  was 
the  better  half  of  his  endowment.  He 
was,  too,  one  who  was  destined  to  develop, 
to  reach  his  powers,  more  by  exercising 
than  by  cultivating  his  poetic  gift;  and 
in  the  events  of  the  agitation  for  the  abo- 
lition of  slavery  he  had  subjects  that  drew 
out  his  moral  emotions  with  most  eloquent 
heat,  and  exalted  his  spirit  to  its  utmost 
of  sympathy,  indignation,  and  heroic  trust. 
The  anti-slavery  movement  was  his  educa- 
tion, —  in  a  true  sense,  the  gymnastic  of 


JOHN    GEEENLEAF    WHITTIER.     305 

his  genius ;  but  in  the  whole  body  of  his 
work  it  was  no  more  than  an  incident, 
although  the  most  stirring  and  most  noble, 
in  his  literary  career,  just  as  it  was  no 
more  in  the  career  of  New  England. 

The  great  events  with  which  a  man 
deals,  and  part  of  which  he  is,  obscure  the 
other  portions  of  his  life;  but  it  should 
not  be  forgotten  that  Whittier  began  as  a 
poet,  and  not  as  a  reformer,  and  it  may  be 
added  that  the  poet  in  him  was,  in  the 
long  run,  more  than  the  reformer.  He  did 
not  resort  to  verse  as  an  expedient  in 
propagandism ;  rather,  wearing  the  laurel, 
—  to  use  the  good  old  phrase, — he  de- 
scended into  the  field  just  as  he  was.  He 
had  begun  with  those  old  Indian  legends 
in  lines  which  still  echoed  with  Byron's 
tales,  and  he  had  with  them  much  the 
same  success  that  attended  other  aborigi- 
nal poetry.  It  seems,  as  one  reads  the 
hundred  weary  epics,  from  which  Whit- 
tier's  are  hardly  to  be  distinguished,  that 
the  curse  of  extinction  resting  on  the 
doomed  race  clung  also  to  the  Muse  that 
so  vainly  attempted  to  recompense  it  with 
immortality  in  the  white  man's  verse. 
These   were   Whittier's    juvenile    trials. 


306     JOHN    GEEENLEAF    WIIITTIEU. 

He  came  early,  nevertheless,  to  his  mature 
form  in  the  ballad  and  the  occasional 
piece ;  his  versification  was  fixed,  his 
manner  determined,  and  thenceforth  there 
was  no  radical  change. 

This  is  less  remarkable  inasmuch  as  it 
is  a  commonplace  to  say  that  he  owed 
nothing  to  art ;  the  strength  of  his  native 
genius  was  all  his  secret,  and  when  he  had 
freed  a  way  for  its  expression  the  task  of 
his  novitiate  was  done.  He  had  now  a 
mould  in  which  to  run  his  metal,  and  it 
satisfied  him  because  he  was  not  exacting 
of  perfect  form  or  high  finish ;  probably  he 
had  no  sense  for  them.  This  indifference 
to  the  artistic  workmanship,  which  a  later 
day  prizes  so  much  as  to  require  it, 
allowed  him  to  indulge  his  natural  facility, 
and  the  very  simplicity  of  his  metres  was 
in  itself  a  temptation  to  diffuseness.  The 
consequence  was  that  he  wrote  much,  and 
not  always  well,  unevenness  being  usually 
characteristic  of  poets  who  rely  on  the 
energy  of  their  genius  for  the  excellence 
of  their  work.  To  the  artist  his  art  serves 
often  as  a  conscience,  and  forces  him  to 
a  standard  below  which  he  is  not  content 
to  fall,     Whittier,  however,   experienced 


JOHN    GREENLEAF    WRITTIER.     307 

the  compensations  which  are  everywhere 
to  be  found  in  life,  and  gained  in  fullness, 
perhaps,  more  than  he  lost  in  other  ways. 
The  free  flow  of  his  thought,  the  simplicity 
of  his  structure,  the  willingness  not  to 
select  with  too  nice  a  sense,  but  to  tell  the 
whole,  all  helped,  to  that  frankness  of  the 
man  which  is  the  great  charm  of  his  works, 
taken  together,  and  assisted  him  in  making 
his  expression  of  old  New  England  life 
complete.  No  man  could  have  written 
Snow-Bound  who  remembered  Theocri- 
tus. In  Whittier,  Nature  reminds  us,  as 
she  is  wont  to  do  from  time  to  time,  that 
the  die  which  she  casts  exceeds  the  diploma 
of  the  school.  Art  may  lift  an  inferior 
talent  to  higher  estimation,  but  genius 
makes  a  very  little  art  go  a  long  way. 
This  was  Whittier's  case.  The  poetic 
spark  was  inborn  in  him,  living  in  his  life ; 
and  when  academic  criticism  has  said  its 
last  word,  he  remains  a  poet,  removed  by 
a  broad  and  not  doubtful  line  from  all 
stringers  of  couplets  and  filers  of  verses. 

Whittier  had,  in  addition  to  this  clear 
native  genius,  character;  his  subject,  too, 
New  England,  had  character;  and  the 
worth  of  the  man  blending  with  the  worth 


308     JOHN    GREENLEAF    WHITTIER. 

of  the  life  he  portrayed,  independent  of  all 
considerations  of  art,  has  won  for  him  the 
admiration  and  affection  of  the  common 
people,  who  know  the  substance  of  virtue, 
and  always  see  it  shining  with  its  own 
light.  They  felt  that  Whittier  wrote  as 
they  would  have  written,  had  they  been 
gifted  with  the  miraculous  tongues;  and 
this  feelinor  is  a  true  criterion  to  discover 
whether  a  poet  has  expressed  the  people 
rather  than  himself.  They  might  choose 
to  write  like  the  great  artists  of  letters ; 
they  know  they  never  could  do  so;  but 
Whittier  is  one  of  themselves. 

The  secret  of  his  vogue  with  the  plain 
people  is  his  own  plainness.  He  appeals 
directly  to  the  heart,  as  much  in  his  lesser 
poems  as  in  those  which  touch  the  sense  of 
right  and  wrong  in  men  with  stinging 
keenness,  or  in  those  which  warm  faith  to 
its  ardor.  He  has  the  popular  love  of  a 
story,  and  tells  it  more  nearly  in  the  way 
of  the  old  ballad-makers.  He  does  not 
require  a  tragedy,  or  a  plot,  or  any  unusual 
action.  An  incident,  if  it  only  have  some 
glamour  of  fancy,  or  a  touch  of  pathos,  or 
the  likeness  of  old  romance,  is  enough  for 
him;  he  will  take  it  and  sing  it  merely  as 


JOUN    GREENLEAF    WUITTIER.     309 

something  that  happened.  He  was  famil- 
iar with  the  legendary  lore  and  historical 
anecdote  of  his  own  county  of  Essex,  and 
he  enjoyed  these  traditions  less  as  history 
than  as  poetry;  he  came  to  them  on  their 
picturesque  and  human  side,  and  cared  for 
them  because  of  the  emotions  they  could 
still  awake.  It  is  to  be  acknowledged, 
too,  that  the  material  for  these  romances 
was  just  such  as  delights  the  popular 
imagination.  The  tales  of  the  witches, 
notwithstanding  the  melancholy  of  the 
delusion,  have  something  of  the  eeriness 
that  is  inseparable  from  the  thought  of  the 
supernatural,  and  stir  the  dormant  sense 
of  some  evil  fascination ;  and  the  legends 
of  spectral  shapes  that  haunted  every  sea- 
coast  in  old  times,  and  of  which  New  Eng- 
land had  its  share,  have  a  similar  quality. 
Whether  they  are  told  by  credulous  Mather 
or  the  make-believing  poet,  they  have  the 
same  power  to  cast  a  spell.  When  to  this 
sort  of  interest  Whittier  adds,  as  he  often 
does,  the  sights  of  religious  persecution, 
or  some  Lochinvar  love-making,  or  the 
expression  of  his  faith  in  heaven,  his  suc- 
cess as  a  story-teller  is  assured.  In  reality, 
he  has  managed  the  ballad  form  with  more 


310     JOHN    GREENLEAF    WHITTIER. 

> 

skill  than  other  measures ;  but  it  is  because 
he  loves  a  story  and  tells  it  for  its  own 
sake,  with  the  ease  of  one  who  sits  by  the 
fireside,  and  with  a  childish  confidence 
that  it  will  interest,  that  he  succeeds  so 
well  in  pleasing.  In  his  sea-stories,  and 
generally  in  what  he  writes  about  the 
ocean,  it  is  observable  that  he  shows  hini-.- 
self  to  be  an  inland-dweller,  whose  acr 
quaintance  with  the  waves  is  by  distant 
glimpses  and  vacation  days.  He  is  not  a 
poet  of  the  sea,  but  this  does  not  invali- 
date the  human  truth  of  his  tales  of  voy- 
aging, which  is  the  element  he  cared  for. 
Perhaps  the  poetic  quality  of  his  genius  is 
most  clear  in  these  ballads ;  there  is  a  freer 
fancy ;  there  are  often  verses  about  woman's 
eyes  and  hair  and  cheeks,  all  with  similes 
from  sky  and  gold  and  roses,  in  the  old 
fashion,  but  not  with  less  naturalness  on 
that  account;  there  is  a  more  absorbing 
appeal  to  the  imagination  both  in  the 
characters  and  the  incidents.  If  these 
cannot  be  called  his  most  vigorous  work, 
they  are  at  least  most  attractive  to  the 
purely  poetic  taste. 

In  the  ballads,  nevertheless,  one  feels 
the  strong  undertow  of  the  moral  sense 


JOHN    GEEENLEAF    WHITTIER.     311 

dragging  the  mind  back  to  serious  realities. 
It  is  probably  true  of  all  the  English  stock, 
as  it  certainly  is  of  New  England  people, 
that  they  do  not  object  to  a  moral,  in  a 
poem  or  anywhere  else.  Whittier's  moral 
hold  upon  his  readers  is  doubtless  greater 
than  his  poetic  hold.  He  appeals  habitu- 
ally to  that  capacity  for  moral  feeling 
which  is  the  genius  of  New  England  in  its 
public  life,  and  the  explanation  of  its 
extraordinary  influence.  No  one  ever 
appeals  to  it  in  vain ;  and  with  such  a 
cause  as  Whittier  took  up  to  champion,  he 
could  ring  out  a  challenge  that  was  sure 
to  rank  the  conscience  of  his  people  upon 
his  side.  His  Quaker  blood,  of  which  he 
was  proud,  pleaded  strongly  in  his  own 
veins.  He  was  the  inheritor  of  suffering 
for  conscience'  sake;  he  was  bred  in  the 
faith  of  equalit}^  of  the  right  of  every 
man  to  private  judgment,  and  the  duty  of 
every  man  to  follow  it  in  public  action; 
and  he  was  well  grounded  in  the  doctrines 
of  political  liberty  which  are  the  founda- 
tion of  the  commonwealth.  It  is  more 
likely,  however,  that  his  enthusiasm  for 
the  slave  did  not  proceed  from  that  love  of 
freedom  which  is  the  breath  of  New  Eng- 


312     JOHN    GREENLEAF    WHITTIEB. 

land.  It  arose  from  his  humanity,  in  the 
broad  sense ;  from  his  belief,  sincerely  held 
and  practiced,  in  the  brotherhood  of  men ; 
from  the  strong  conviction  that  slavery 
was  wrong.  It  was  a  matter  of  conscience 
more  than  of  reason,  of  compassion  and 
sympathy  more  than  of  theoretical  ideas. 
These  were  the  sources  of  his  moral  feel- 
ing ;  his  attitude  was  the  same  whether  he 
was  dealing  with  Quaker  outrages  in  the 
past  or  with  negro  wrongs  in  the  present. 
In  expressing  himself  upon  the  great  topic 
of  his  time,  he  was  thus  able  to  make  the 
same  direct  appeal  to  the  heart  that  was 
natural  to  his  temperament.  The  people 
either  felt  as  he  did,  or  were  so  circum- 
stanced that  they  would  respond  from  the 
same  springs  which  had  been  touched  in 
him,  if  a  way  could  be  found  to  them. 
Outside  of  the  reserves  of  political  ex- 
pediency, the  movement  for  abolition 
was  harmonious  with  the  moral  nature  of 
New  England.  Yet  Whittier's  occasional 
verses  upon  this  theme  made  him  only 
the  poet  of  his  party.  In  themselves  they 
have  great  vigor  of  feeling,  and  frequently 
force  of  language ;  they  have  necessarily 
the  defects,  judged  from  the  artistic  stand- 


JOHN    GREENLEAF    WUITTIER.      313 

point,  of  poems  upon  a  painful  subject,  in 
which  it  was  desirable  not  to  soften,  but 
to  bring  out  the  tragedy  most  harshly. 
The  pain,  however,  is  entirely  in  the  facts 
presented;  the  poetry  lies  in  the  indigna- 
tion, the  eloquence,  the  fine  appeal.  These 
verses,  indeed,  are  nearer  to  a  prose  level 
than  the  rest  of  his  work,  in  the  sense  of 
partaking  of  the  character  of  eloquence 
rather  than  of  poetry.  Their  method  is 
less  through  the  imagination  than  by 
rhetoric.  They  are  declamatory.  But 
rhetoric  of  the  balanced  and  concise  kind 
natural  to  short  metrical  stanzas  is  espe- 
cially well  adapted  to  arrest  popular  atten- 
tion and  to  hold  it.  Just  as  he  told  a 
story  in  the  ballad  with  a  true  popular 
feeling,  so  he  pleaded  the  cause  of  the 
abolitionists  in  a  rhetoric  most  effective 
with  the  popular  taste.  In  the  war  time, 
he  rose,  under  the  stress  of  the  great 
struggle,  to  finer  poetic  work;  the  softer 
feelings  of  pity,  together  with  a  solemn 
religious  trust,  made  the  verses  of  those 
battle-summers  different  in  quality  from 
those  of  the  literary  conflict  of  the  earlier 
years.  He  never  surpassed,  on  the  lower 
level  of  rhetoric,  the  lines  which  bade  fare- 


314     JOHN    GBEENLEAF    WHITTIER. 

well  to  Webster's  greatness,  nor  did  he 
ever  equal  in  intensity  those  rally ing- 
cries  of  defiance  to  the  South,  in  which  the 
free  spirit  of  the  North  seemed  to  speak 
before  its  time.  In  these  he  is  urging  on 
to  the  conflict,  ■ —  a  moral  and  peaceful  one, 
he  thought,  but  not  less  real  and  hard ;  in 
the  war  pieces,  he  seems  rather  to  be  wait- 
ing for  the  decision  of  Providence,  while 
the  fight  has  rolled  on  far  in  the  van  of 
where  he  stands.  The  power  of  all  these 
poems,  their  reality  to  those  times,  is  un- 
deniable. Their  fitness  for  declamation 
perhaps  spread  his  reputation.  Longfel- 
low is  distinctly  the  children's  poet;  but 
Whittier  had  a  part  of  their  suffrages,  and 
it  was  by  such  stirring  occasional  verses 
that  he  gained  them.  In  those  years  of 
patriotism  he  was  to  many  of  them,  as  he 
was  to  me,  the  first  poet  whom  they  knew. 
At  that  time  his  reputation  in  ways  like 
these  became  established.  If  he  had  not 
then  done  his  best  work,  he  had  at  tinies 
reached  the  highest  level  he  was  to  attain, 
and  he  had  already  given  full  expression 
to  his  nature.  His  place  as  the  poet  of 
the  anti-slavery  movement  was  fixed.  It 
is  observable  that  he  did  not   champion 


JOHN    GREENLEAF    WHITTIEB.     315 

other  causes  after  that  of  abolition  was 
won,  and  in  this  he  differed  from  most  of 
his  companions.  The  only  other  cause 
that  roused  him  to  the  point  of  poetic  ex- 
pression was  that  of  the  Italian  patriots. 
Some  of  his  most  indignant  and  sharpest 
invective  was  directed  against  Pope  Pius 
IX.,  who  stood  to  Whittier  as  the  very 
type  of  that  Christian  obstructiveness  to 
the  work  of  Christ  which  in  a  lesser  degree 
he  had  seen  in  his  own  country,  and  had 
seen  always  only  to  express  the  heartfelt 
scorn  which  descended  to  him  with  his 
Quaker  birthright. 

It  would  be  unfitting  to  leave  this  part 
of  the  subject  without  reference  to  the 
numerous  personal  tributes,  often  full  of 
grace,  of  tender  feeling,  and  of  true  honor 
paid  to  the  humble,  which  he  was  accus- 
tomed to  lay  as  his  votive  wreath  on  the 
graves  of  his  companions.  One  is  struck 
once  more  by  the  reflection  how  large  a 
part  those  who  are  now  forgotten  had  in 
advancing  the  cause,  how  many  modest 
but  earnest  lives  entered  into  the  work, 
and  what  a  feeling  of  comradery  there  was 
among  those  engaged  in  philanthropic  ser- 
vice in  all  lands.     The  verses  to  Garrison 


316      JOHN    GREENLEAF    WEITTIER. 

and  Sumner  naturally  stand  first  in  fervor 
and  range  as  well  as  in  interest,  but  nearly 
all  these  mementos  of  the  dead  have  some 
touch  of  nobility. 

The  victory  of  the  Northern  ideas  left  to 
Whittier  a  freer  field  for  the  later  exercise 
of  his  talent.  It  was  natural  that  he  should 
have  been  among  the  first  to  speak  words 
of  conciliation  to  the  defeated  South,  and 
to  offer  to  forget.  He  was  a  man  of  peace, 
of  pardons,  of  all  kinds  of  catholic  inclu- 
sions; and  in  this  temperament  with  re- 
gard to  the  future  of  the  whole  country, 
fortunately,  the  people  agreed  with  him. 
With  the  coming  of  the  years  of  reconcilia- 
tion his  reputation  steadily  gained.  His 
representative  quality  as  a  New  Englander 
was  recognized.  It  was  seen  that  from  the 
beginning  the  real  spirit  of  New  England 
had  been  truly  with  him,  and,  the  cause 
being  now  won  and  the  past  a  great  one, 
his  countrymen  were  proud  of  him  for 
having  been  a  part  of  it.  At  this  happy 
moment  he  produced  a  work  free  from  any 
entanglement  with  things  disputed,  re- 
markable for  its  truth  to  life,  and  exem- 
plifying the  character  of  New  England  at 
its  fireside  in  the  way  which  comes  home 


JOHN    GBEENLEAF    WHITTIER.     317 

to  all  men.  It  is  not  without  perfect  jus- 
tice that  Snow-Bound  takes  rank  with 
The  Cotter's  Saturday  Night  and  The 
Deserted  Village;  it  belongs  in  this 
group  as  a  faithful  picture  of  humble  life. 
It  is  perfect  in  its  conception  and  complete 
in  its  execution;  it  is  the  New  England 
home,  entire,  with  its  characteristic  scene, 
its  incidents  of  household  life,  its  Christian 
virtues.  Perhaps  many  of  us  look  back  to 
it  as  Horace  did  to  the  Sabine  farm ;  but 
there  are  more  who  can  still  remember  it 
as  a  reality,  and  to  them  this  winter  idyl 
is  the  poetry  of  their  own  lives.  It  is,  in 
a  peculiar  sense,  the  one  poem  of  New 
England,  —  so  completely  indigenous  that 
the  soil  has  fairly  created  it,  so  genuine  as 
to  be  better  than  history.  It  is  by  virtue 
of  this  poem  that  Whittier  must  be  most 
highly  rated,  because  he  is  here  most  im- 
personal, and  has  succeeded  in  expressing 
the  common  life  with  most  directness. 
All  his  affection  for  the  soil  on  which  he 
was  born  went  into  it;  and  no  one  ever 
felt  more  deeply  that  attachment  to  the 
region  of  his  birth  which  is  the  great 
spring  of  patriotism.  In  his  other  poems 
he  had  told  the  legends  of  the  country,  and 


318     JOHN    GREENLEAF    WHITTIEB. 

winnowed  its  history  for  what  was  most 
heroic  or  romantic;  he  had  often  dwelt, 
with  a  reiteration  which  emphasized  his 
fondness,  upon  its  scenery  in  every  season, 
by  all  its  mountains  and  capes  and  lakes 
and  rivers,  as  if  fearful  lest  he  should 
offend  by  omission  some  local  divinity  of 
the  field  or  flood;  he  had  shared  in  the 
great  moral  passion  of  his  people  in  peace 
and  war,  and  had  become  its  voice  and 
been  adopted  as  one  of  its  memorable 
leaders ;  but  here  he  came  to  the  heart  of  the 
matter,  and  by  describing  the  homestead, 
which  was  the  unit  and  centre  of  New 
England  life,  he  set  the  seal  upon  his 
work,  and  entered  into  all  New  England 
homes  as  a  perpetual  guest. 

There  remains  one  part  of  his  work,  and 
that,  in  some  respects,  the  loftiest,  which 
is  in  no  sense  local.  The  Christian  faith 
which  he  expressed  is  not  to  be  limited  as 
distinctly  characteristic  of  New  England. 
No  one  would  make  the  claim.  It  was 
descended  from  the  Quaker  faith  only  as 
Emerson's  was  derived  from  that  of  the 
Puritan,  Whittier  belongs  with  those 
few  who  arise  in  all  parts  of  the  Christian 
world  and  out  of  the  bosom  of  all  sects, 


JOHN    GBEENLEAF    WHITTIER.     319 

who  are  lovers  of  the  spirit.  They  illus- 
trate the  purest  teachings  of  Christ,  they 
express  the  simplest  aspirations  of  man; 
and  this  is  their  religious  life.  They  do 
not  trouble  themselves  except  to  do  good, 
to  be  sincere,  to  walk  in  the  sight  of  the 
higher  powers  with  humbleness,  and  if  not 
without  doubt,  yet  with  undiminished 
trust.  The  optimism  of  Whittier  is  one 
with  theirs.  It  is  indissolubly  connected 
with  his  humanity  to  men.  In  his  re- 
ligious as  in  his  moral  nature  there  was 
the  same  simplicity,  the  same  entire  co- 
herency. His  expression  of  the  religious 
feeling  is  always  noble  and  impressive. 
He  is  one  of  the  very  few  whose  poems, 
under  the  fervor  of  religious  emotion,  have 
taken  a  higher  range  and  become  true 
hymns.  Several  of  these  are  already 
adopted  into  the  books  of  praise.  But 
independently  of  these  few  most  complete 
expressions  of  trust  and  worship,  wher- 
ever Whittier  touches  upon  the  problems 
of  the  spiritual  life  he  evinces  the  qualities 
of  a  great  and  liberal  nature ;  indeed,  the 
traits  which  are  most  deeply  impressed 
upon  us,  in  his  character,  are  those  which 
are  seen  most  clearly  in  his  religious  verse. 


320     JOHN    GBEENLEAF    WIIITTIER. 

It  is  impossible  to  think  of  him  and  forget 
that  he  is  a  Christian.  It  is  not  rash  to 
say  that  it  is  probable  that  his  religious 
poems  have  reached  many  more  hearts  than 
his  anti-slavery  pieces,  and  have  had  a 
profounder  influence  to  quiet,  to  console, 
and  to  refine.  Yet  he  was  not  distinctly 
a  poet  of  religion,  as  Herbert  was.  He 
was  a  man  in  whom  religion  was  vital,  just 
as  affection  for  his  home  and  indignation 
at  wrongdoing  were  vital.  He  gave  ex- 
pression to  his  manhood,  and  consequently 
to  the  religious  life  he  led.  There  are  in 
these  revelations  of  his  nature  the  same 
frankness  and  the  same  reality  as  in  his 
most  heated  polemics  with  the  oppressors 
of  the  weak;  one  cannot  avoid  feeling  that 
it  is  less  the  poet  than  the  man  who  is 
speaking,  and  that  in  his  words  he  is 
giving  himself  to  his  fellow-men.  This 
sense  that  Whittier  belongs  to  that  class 
of  writers  in  whom  the  man  is  larger  than 
his  work  is  a  just  one.  Over  and  above 
his  natural  genius  was  his  character.  At 
every  step  of  the  analysis,  it  is  not  with 
art,  but  with  matter,  not  with  the  litera- 
ture of  taste,  but  with  that  of  life,  not  with 
a  poet's  skill,  but  with  a  man's  soul,  that 


JOHN    GEEENLEAF    WHITTIER.     321 

we  find  ourselves  dealing ;  in  a  word,  it  is 
with  character  almost  solely :  and  it  is  this 
which  has  made  him  the  poet  of  his  people, 
as  the  highest  art  might  have  failed  to  do, 
because  he  has  put  his  New  England  birth 
and  breeding,  the  common  inheritance  of 
her  freedom-loving,  humane,  and  religious 
people  which  he  shared,  into  plain  living, 
yet  on  such  a  level  of  distinction  that  his 
virtues  have  honored  the  land. 

The  simplicity  and  dignity  of  Whittier's 
later  years,  and  his  fine  modesty  in  respect 
to  his  literary  work,  have  fitly  closed  his 
career.  He  has  received  in  the  fullest 
measure  from  the  younger  generation  the 
rewards  of  honor  which  belong  to  such  a 
life.  In  his  retirement  these  unsought 
tributes  of  an  almost  affectionate  venera- 
tion have  followed  him;  and  in  the 
struggle  about  us  for  other  prizes  than 
those  he  aimed  at,  in  the  crush  for  wealth 
and  notoriety,  men  have  been  pleased  to 
remember  him,  the  plain  citizen,  uncheap- 
ened  by  riches  and  unsolicitous  for  fame, 
ending  his  life  with  the  same  habits  with 
which  he  began  it,  in  the  same  spirit  in 
which  he  led  it,  without  any  compromise 
with  the  world.     The  Quaker  aloofness 


322     JOHN    GREENLEAF    WHITTIEE. 

which  has  always  seemed  to  characterize 
him,  his  difference  from  other  men,  has 
never  been  sufficient  to  break  the  bonds 
which  unite  him  with  the  people,  but  it 
has  helped  to  secure  for  him  the  feeling 
with  which  the  poet  is  always  regarded  as 
a  man  apart;  the  religious  element  in  his 
nature  has  had  the  same  effect  to  win  for 
him  a  peculiar  regard  akin  to  that  which 
was  felt  in  old  times  for  the  sacred  office ; 
to  the  imagination  he  has  been,  especially 
in  the  years  of  his  age,  a  man  of  peace  and 
of  God.  No  one  of  his  contemporaries  has 
been  more  silently  beloved  and  more  sin- 
cerely honored.  If  it  be  true  that  in  him 
the  man  was  more  than  the  poet,  it  is  hap- 
pily not  true,  as  in  such  cases  it  too  often 
is,  that  the  life  was  less  than  it  should 
have  been.  The  life  of  Whittier  affects 
us  rather  as  singularly  fortunate  in  the 
completeness  with  which  he  was  able  to 
do  his  whole  duty,  to  possess  his  soul, 
and  to  keep  himself  unspotted  from  the 
world.  He  was  fortunate  in  his  humble 
birth  and  the  virtues  which  were  about  his 
cradle ;  he  was  fortunate  in  the  great  cause 
for  which  he  suffered  and  labored  in  his 
prime,  exactly  fitted  as  it  was  to  develop 


JOHN    GREENLEAF    WHITTIER.      323 

his  nature  to  its  highest  moral  reach,  and 
lift  him  to  real  greatness  of  soul;  he  was 
fortunate  in  his  old  age,  in  the  mellow- 
ness of  his  humanity,  the  repose  of  his 
faith,  the  fame  which,  more  truly  than  can 
usually  be  said,  was  "love  disguised." 
Lovers  of  New  England  will  cherish  his 
memory  as  that  of  a  man  in  whom  the  vir- 
tues of  this  soil,  both  for  public  and  for 
private  life,  shine  most  purely.  On  the 
roll  of  American  poets  we  know  not  how 
he  may  be  ranked  hereafter,  but  among  the 
honored  names  of  the  New  England  past 
his  place  is  secure. 


JAMES   RUSSELL   LOWELL. 

Mr.  Lowell  has  written  into  his  works 
his  many  titles  to  public  remembrance 
with  singular  completeness.  One  need 
not  go  outside  of  the  ten  volumes  in  which 
the  fruits  of  a  long  literary  and  public  life 
are  gathered  to  know  what  he  has  been  and 
has  done.  The  sign-manual  of  the  poet, 
critic,  and  scholar  is  set  upon  the  various 
page;  moods  of  the  fields  and  the  home- 
stead, the  permanent  attraction  of  human 
nature,  patriotism  profoundly  felt  are 
equally  found  in  essay  and  poem ;  and  in 
the  admirable  addresses  there  is  stored  up 
a  lasting  memory  of  the  years  of  his  dis- 
tinguished service  abroad.  The  fullness 
of  this  expression  of  a  many-sided  career 
is  remarkable;  but  even  more  striking  is 
the  harmony  of  all  these  phases  of  life,  one 
with  another.  There  is  no  dividing  line 
which  sets  off  one  part  of  his  activity  from 
its  neighbor  part;  in  his  poetry  there  is 
politics,  in  his  learning  there  is  the  vivi- 
fying touch  of  humor,   in   his  reflection 

324 


JAMES    RUSSELL    LOWELL.        325 

there  is  emotion,  in  the  levels  of  his  most 
familiar  prose  there  is,  at  inconstant  inter- 
vals, the  sudden  lift  of  a  noble  thought; 
and  hence  his  works  are  at  once  too  diverse 
and  too  similar  —  diverse  in  their  mat- 
ter and  similar  in  the  personality  through 
which  they  are  given  out  —  to  be  easily 
summed  or  described  by  the  methods  of 
criticism.  If  there  is  a  clew  that  may  be 
used,  it  is  to  be  sought  in  his  individu- 
ality, in  the  fact  that  his  ten  talents  have 
somehow  been  melted  and  fused  into  one, 
and  that  the  greatest  —  the  talent  of  being 
a  man  first  and  everything  else  afterward. 
It  goes  with  this  that  one  looks  in  vain  for 
any  separation  of  his  work  into  marked 
periods,  such  as  may  be  observed  in  those 
writers  who  are  absorbed  by  successive 
moods  of  the  age  or  by  new  foreign  influ- 
ences in  thought  or  literary  forms,  or  gen- 
erally are  determined  in  their  character  by 
external  forces.  Mr.  Lowell,  with  all  his 
free  curiosity,  alertness  of  attention,  and 
openness  to  the  world  of  the  present  and 
of  the  past,  has  exercised  a  power  of  reac- 
tion equal  to  that  of  his  receptivity,  and 
illustrates  the  slow  native  growth  of  a  self- 
assured  mind.     From  the  first  to  the  last 


326         JAMES    RUSSELL    LOWELL. 

of  his  pages  the  unity  of  mind  is  such  that, 
unhelped  by  the  context,  one  could  rarely 
say  with  certainty  whether  a  particular 
passage  was  from  earlier  or  later  years. 
Neither  the  style  nor  the  way  of  thinking 
materially  changes ;  the  same  person 
speaks  with  the  same  voice  throughout. 
This  singleness  of  Mr.  Lowell's  person- 
ality, by  virtue  of  which  he  has  held  the 
same  course  from  youth  to  age,  as  it  is 
most  obvious,  is  a  cardinal  matter.  It 
were  impossible  to  condense  into  the  brief 
critical  sketch  for  which  only  there  is  now 
occasion,  all  that  criticism  must  find  to 
say  upon  his  writings  throughout  their 
reach ;  but  in  the  absence  of  such  a  com- 
plete and  careful  survey,  something  may 
be  arrived  at,  possibly,  by  attending  to 
this  stamp  of  individuality  which  gives 
likeness  to  all  his  works  and  imparts  to 
them  that  quality  of  the  living  voice  which 
most  interests  and  best  holds  men,  and  is 
besides  the  invariable  accompaniment  of 
an  original  mind  in  literature. 

It  is  commonly  a  disadvantage  to  a  poet 
to  be  reputed  a  scholar.  Belief  in  the 
spontaneity  of  genius  is  deeply  implanted 
in  men's  mind,  and  culture  is  set   over 


JAMES    RUSSELL    LOWELL.         327 

against  the  simple  primitive  powers  of 
feeling  and  thought  as  something  by  nature 
opposite.  In  this  popular  opinion  there 
is  a  share  of  truth.  Instinct  is  the  method 
of  genius,  but  culture,  until  it  has  been 
absorbed  into  character  and  temperament, 
works  by  afterthought.  The  conflict  which 
is  indicated  by  this  widely  diffused  im- 
pression of  the  incompatibility  of  learning 
and  inspiration  is  often  felt  by  a  poet  him- 
self in  his  own  experience.  Mr.  Lowell, 
who  more  than  any  other  writer  of  his 
time  expresses  the  moods  of  that  border- 
land which  lies  between  instinct  and  re- 
flection, speaks  more  than  once  of  the 
intrusion  of  thought  upon  the  natural  way 
of  living,  and  shows  the  old  annoyance, 
that  poetical  regret  for  a  simpler  habit  of 
life,  which  underlies  the  dream  of  the 
golden  age  and  is  the  source  of  the  charm 
of  all  pastoral.  In  a  considerable  portion 
of  his  nature-verse  he  accepts  the  Words- 
worthian  doctrine  and  goes  to  the  fields  as 
an  escape  from  books,  lays  thought  down 
like  a  burden  and  plays  it  is  holiday  with 
him,  and  in  coming  back  to  the  study 
seems  to  make  an  unwelcome  return  to 
himself.     Yet  he  is  not  slow  to  acknowl- 


328        JAMES    RUSSELL    LOWELL. 

edge  that  the  true  poet  has  a  pedigree  that 
goes  far  into  the  past  of  men  as  well  as  a 
kinship  of  the  day  and  hour  with  sky  and 
birds  and  trees,  the  soft  air  and  the  warm 
landscape.  If  he  seeks  impulses  in  nature, 
he  must  find  art  in  books ;  and  from  his 
earlier  poems  it  is  plain  to  see  what  sources 
in  literature  he  most  haunted.  Imitative- 
ness  in  youthful  verse  is  a  measure  of  sus- 
ceptibility, and  is  rather  a  sign  of  strength 
than  of  weakness.  The  test  of  originality, 
or  of  the  native  force  of  the  poetical  en- 
dowment, lies  in  the  spontaneity  of  the 
imitation  and  in  the  quickness  with  which 
one  type  shifts  with  another.  It  is  notice- 
able that  Mr,  Lowell  reproduced  kinds  of 
poetry  rather  than  particular  authors,  style 
rather  than  moods,  the  cast  of  the  words, 
not  ideas ;  and  the  sign  of  culture  in  these 
beginnings  is  shown  in  the  number  of  types 
which  attracted  him.  So  a  similar  literary 
scholarship,  an  acquaintance  with  what 
the  poets  of  many  lands  had  written,  gave 
to  Longfellow  in  his  mature  life,  as  well 
as  at  the  outset,  models  of  style  which  he 
made  his  own  rather  by  graceful  use  of 
them  than  by  informing  them  with  origi- 
nal genius.     In  Mr.  Lowell's  case,  per- 


JAMES    RUSSELL    LOWELL.         329 

haps,  the  single  peculiarity  is  the  taste  he 
early  showed  for  certain  of  the  English 
poets  of  the  seventeenth  century  whose 
defects  of  oddity  and  unevenness  could  not 
destroy  the  largeness  of  their  phrase  and 
the  purity  and  elevation  of  their  continu- 
ous style  at  its  best.  One  need  not  read 
Mr.  Lowell's  criticism  to  discover  what 
value  he  placed  upon  Donne  and  Vaughan, 
for  example,  and  those  who  neighbor  them 
in  the  "well-languaged"  manner.  Cul- 
ture of  this  sort,  which  is  no  more  than 
the  fruit  of  delight  in  j^oetry,  has  been  the 
possession  of  many  of  those  poets  who  are 
most  thought  inspired,  and  genius  has 
thrived  upon  it;  but  usually  the  greatest 
of  them  have  felt  the  gap  between  such 
poetry  of  the  past  and  the  nature  they 
stood  in  presence  of,  and  each  in  turn  has 
reconciled  his  genius  with  his  own  age  in 
some  original  way. 

Mr.  Lowell  soon  developed  several  styles 
in  which  he  wrote  poems  of  many  kinds, 
and  gave  literary  expression  to  sentiment, 
thought,  and  emotion;  but  he  was  later 
preeminently  distinguished  by  three  forms 
of  verse.  The  most  popular  of  these,  ap- 
parently, and  certainly  the  most  original. 


830        JAMES    BUSSELL    LOWELL. 

is  that  in  which  he  employed  the  native 
Yankee  speech.  It  was  fairly  by  accident, 
he  says,  that  he  discovered  the  power  of 
this  New  England  lingo  to  express  the 
character  of  the  breed  of  men  who  used  it 
and  its  fitness  for  the  purpose  in  dealing 
with  the  subjects  to  which  he  applied  it. 
Nevertheless,  chance  has  as  little  place  in 
literature  as  in  other  affairs  of  life.  One 
finds  only  those  things  to  which  his  faith 
has  led  him.  There  are  reasons  in  plenty 
why  Mr.  Lowell,  and  not  any  of  his  con- 
temporaries in  letters,  made  the  happy 
discovery  of  the  Yankee  idyl.  His  own 
roots  go  deep  into  the  native  soil ;  he  loves 
that  from  which  he  sprang,  and  the  past 
was  realized  to  his  apprehension  most 
directly  through  the  old  time,  which  still 
lingered  about  the  Cambridge  of  his  grow- 
ing years,  and  through  its  concrete  charac- 
ters of  diverse  types  from  clerical  to  rural 
which  interested  his  human  sympathy, 
struck  his  humorous  sense,  and  embodied 
for  him  the  long  tradition  of  a  dying  age 
showing  its  results  in  man.  This  strong 
attachment  to  the  paternal  acres  because  of 
old  associations  is  a  trait  common  to  New 
England;  but   none  of   the  poets  of   the 


JAMES    BUSSELL    LOWELL.         331 

land  have  given  more  frequent  and  free 
expression  to  the  feeling  or  shown  its 
power  in  an  individual  more  constantly. 
The  old  New  England  character  appealed 
to  him  in  the  same  way  that  the  Scotch 
type  drew  Sir  Walter  Scott's  heart  out; 
each  found  in  the  ancient  habit  of  life  of 
"sixty  years  since  "  a  literary  opportunity, 
but  not  by  thought  prepense ;  in  both  the 
old  ways,  crystallized  in  human  nature, 
were  loved  for  their  own  sake  with  a  kind 
of  natural  affection,  and  were  besides  dig- 
nified by  a  true  respect  for  their  moral 
quality  felt  through  all  their  humorous 
peculiarities.  Scotland  had  more  of  his- 
tory, of  romance,  and  picturesqueness  to 
mingle  with  the  human  element  of  com- 
mon lives ;  in  New  England  there  was  less 
of  circumstance,  but  there  was  a  core  of 
character  equally  sound,  a  way  of  think- 
ing and  a  freshness  of  expression,  marked 
and  peculiar,  characterizing  a  people. 
The  attractiveness  of  such  survivals  from 
the  old  days  as  Mr.  Lowell  either  knew  in 
the  beginning  of  life  or  met  with  from 
time  to  time  in  the  still  uninvaded  coun- 
try districts  was  enhanced  further  by  the 
fact  that  they  stood  for  that  simpler  mode 


332        JAMES    RUSSELL    LOWELL. 

of  existence,  already  referred  to,  which  the 
poet  is  fain  to  think  of  as  the  better  way 
of  living,  could  he  make  the  impossible 
escape  from  his  own  bonds;  and  it  was 
entirely  natural  that  the  two  moods  should 
blend  and  the  keen  air  of  New  England 
suffer  the  pastoral  change  with  the  least 
artifice  in  the  world.  In  the  poem  in 
which  he  describes  his  day  under  the  wil- 
lows Mr.  Lowell  reveals  in  most  phases 
the  feeling  habitual  to  his  mind,  of  the 
sense  of  nature  as  a  refuge,  of  the  strength 
of  associations  with  a  familiar  landscape, 
of  the  welcome  he  would  give  to  the  rude 
moulds  of  man,  and,  in  a  word,  shows  the 
attitude  of  the  poet,  who  is  also  a  man  of 
thought,  toward  nature  and  human  nature 
met  face  to  face;  and  in  this  reflective 
reverie,  full  of  personal  expression,  the 
elements  are  the  same  as  in  pastoral  verse 
though  seen  under  a  different  aspect. 
When  he  came  to  imaginative  expression 
through  the  medium  of  old  New  England, 
he  escaped  at  once  from  the  literary  atmos- 
phere, finding  both  a  subject  and  a  lan- 
guage wholly  unworn  by  use  in  books ; 
and  what  he  was  to  express  was  just  that 
type  of  character  in  which  human  nature 


JAMES    RUSSELL    LOWELL.         333 

was  most  fresh,  sincere,  and  genuine  to 
his  senses  and  could  be  entered  into  most 
completely  by  virtue  of  native  sympathies 
long  active  in  his  blood,  while  the  medium 
of  speech  was  the  tongue  of  the  country 
people  as  they  themselves  had  fashioned 
it  for  their  own  uses.  Not  since  Theocritus 
wrote  the  Sicilian  idyls  has  the  pastoral 
come  so  near  to  real  life  or  been  not  merely 
so  free  from  artificiality  but  so  slightly 
transformed  in  the  change  from  life  into 
art.  Mr.  Lowell  did  not  attempt  the  use- 
less task  of  saying  what  the  average  up- 
country  man  would  have  said  if  left  to 
himself;  but,  in  expressing  the  true  genius 
of  the  New  England  character  with  a  preci- 
sion and  range  impossible  excejDt  to  a  man 
of  his  own  faculty,  he  succeeded  in  keep- 
ing both  thought  and  language  within  the 
limit  of  the  character  through  which  he 
spoke.  He  permitted  himself  to  use  ele- 
vation or  pathos  or  the  beauty  of  natural 
scenes,  which  both  true  art  and  the  im- 
pulse of  his  own  awakened  powers  re- 
quired; but  he  has  managed  all  with  so 
sure  a  hand,  such  discernment  and  sensi- 
tiveness in  his  feeling  for  the  form  used, 
ttat  all  is  as  definitely  objective  as  di-ama 


334        JAMES    BUSSELL    LOWELL. 

or  novel,  and  the  sense  of  reality  is  height- 
ened, and  the  expression  of  the  old  spirit 
made  more  complete,  by  the  curious  prose 
of  the  pulpit  in  which  the  poems  are  set. 
It  remains  only  to  add  that  in  taking  pub- 
lic affairs  for  the  main  body  of  the  matter 
of  the  verse  Mr.  Lowell  chose  the  subject 
that  fitted  the  mind  of  New  England  as 
perfectly  as  the  country  language  fitted 
its  lips. 

The  second  form  of  verse  in  which  Mr. 
Lowell  has  most  excelled  is  next  of  kin 
to  the  Yankee  poems.  He  was  not  only 
the  son  of  New  England,  but  he  was  born 
also  to  the  wider  inheritance  of  his  fellow- 
countrymen  everywhere,  and  could  lay 
aside  the  provincialism  of  his  eastern  ac- 
cent and  phrase  for  the  ampler  English  of 
the  nation's  speech.  Love  of  home  is  the 
seed-plant  of  patriotism,  and  it  was  in- 
evitable that  faith  to  New  England  should 
grow  to  the  larger  compass  of  faith  in 
America;  and  if  in  attachment  to  the 
native  soil  itself,  such  as  Mr.  Lowell  ex- 
presses, there  may  be  a  certain  closeness 
and  peculiar  warmth  of  the  hearthstone, 
in  his  love  of  country  there  is  more  of 
what  is  purely  ideal.     When  he  first  col- 


JAMES    BUS  SELL    LOWELL.         335 

lected  his  political  papers,  there  was  some 
surprise  at  the  amount  and  value  of  his 
writings   upon   the   public   topics  of  the 
time;  but  though  this  work  in  prose  had 
been  forgotten,  it  would  still  have  been 
plain  enough  from  his  poems  that  he  was 
ever  in  a  true  sense  the  citizen.    In  think- 
ing of  his  patriotic  verse  attention  is  com- 
monly too  exclusively  given  to  the  group 
of  odes  which  were  rather  the   last  and 
crowning  work  of  a  lifelong  labor  than  iso- 
lated productions.     In  the  very  start  he 
gave  his  country  the  ringing  stanzas  of 
The  Present  Crisis,  with  the  one  indelible 
line,  and  that  sonnet  to  Phillips   which 
still  stirs  the  blood ;  and,  as  time  went  on, 
in  the  first  series  of  The  Biglow  Papers 
he  dealt  with  a  great  political  question  of 
the  period,  and  coming  to  the  strong  pas- 
sions   and    immeasurable     issues    of    the 
civil  war  he  could  scarce  write  of  anything 
else.     It  was   only  after  the  peace,   and 
in  the  assured  triumph  of  the  centennial 
anniversaries  of  the  united  country,  that 
he  closed  the  extensive  series  of  poems, 
inspired  by   public   spirit   in  the  widest 
meaning  of  that  phrase,  with  the  long  odes 
which  by  their  solemn  movement,    their 


336         JAMES    RUSSELL    LOWELL. 

gravity,  and  the  loftiness  of  their  finer 
passages  have  that  stateliness  which  makes 
them  seem  to  dwarf  liis  less  impressive 
poems  in  this  kind.  He  had  been  the 
true  citizen-poet  for  almost  a  lifetime 
before  he  was  called  to  this  ceremonial 
laureateship,  and  had  used  the  lighter  in- 
strumentalities of  humor,  satire,  and  wit, 
the  edge  of  epigram  and  poignancy  of 
pathos,  as  occasion  arose;  so  that  one  may 
fairly  say  that  first  and  last  he  employed 
well-nigh  all  the  resources  of  his  mind  in 
the  service  of  his  country.  To  think  of 
the  odes  mainly  as  Mr.  Lowell's  patriotic 
verse  would  be  a  grave  injustice  both  to 
the  man  and  the  poet,  for  passages  may  be 
found  in  the  earlier  verse  equal,  at  least, 
to  anything  except  the  best  in  this  last 
group.  The  distinction  of  the  odes,  and 
one  reason  why  they  have  affected  the 
public  disproportionately  in  comparison 
with  the  best  of  the  other  poems,  is  their 
style.  It  is  a  style  which  Mr.  Lowell  l^as 
developed  for  himself,  and  is  to  be  met 
with  here  and  there  in  detached  passages 
of  his  earlier  poetry,  but  nowhere  else  is  it 
so  even  and  continuous  as  in  the  odes. 
It  is  characterized  by  a  breadth  and  undu- 


JAMES    BUS  SELL    LOWELL.         337 

lation  of  tone  and  a  purity  hard  to  describe, 
but  these  traits  are  not  of  consequence  in 
comparison  with  the  certainty  with  which, 
no  matter  how  finally  resonant  the  wave 
of  sound  may  be,  the  thought  absorbs  it 
and  becomes  itself  vocal  and  musical. 
The  diction  itself  and  the  cast  of  phrase 
metrically  seem  to  derive  from  that  period 
of  English  subsequent  to  the  Elizabethan 
ferment  when  the  language  retained  free- 
dom and  spirit  and  a  certain  amplitude 
from  the  past  age,  but  had  not  yet  subsided 
into  the  formalism,  however  excellent  in 
itself,  of  the  great  age  of  prose ;  but  if  Mr. 
Lowell  found  the  elements  of  this  grave 
and  full  style  in  that  period,  he  has  so 
recombined  them  in  his  own  manner  that 
to  trace  out  the  source  is  at  most  only  to 
hazard  a  guess.  It  is,  however,  this  felici- 
tous and  well-commanded  style  which  is 
the  noticeable  literary  quality  of  the  odes, 
and  of  the  finer  stanzas  of  other  poems, 
such  as  The  Washing  of  the  Shroud,  to 
name  one  of  the  first ;  to  have  elaborated  it 
is,  possibly,  the  highest  distinction  of  Mr. 
Lowell  as  a  writer,  in  the  strict  sense,  on 
the  purely  original  side  of  his  literary 
craftsmanship. 


338        JAMES   RUSSELL    LOWELL. 

It  is,  however,  almost  a  diversion  to 
direct  attention  to  the  literary  quality  of 
these  poems.  What  is  most  to  be  remarked 
in  them,  aside  from  their  earnest  intention 
and  the  emotion  that  is  sometimes  the 
welling-up  of  a  deep  passion,  is  the  purity 
of  the  democratic  feeling  in  them,  the 
soundness  of  their  Americanism.  Mr. 
Lowell  in  one  of  his  earlier  volumes  laid 
his  wreath  on  the  grave  of  Hood,  and  there 
are  a  few  of  his  poems  that  express  the  sym- 
pathy of  philanthropy  with  the  poor  and 
outcast ;  but  this  is  a  comparatively  crude 
form  of  the  democratic  idea  and  hardly 
exceeds  charity.  It  is  easy  to  pity  suf- 
fering in  any  shape  and  to  believe  in  the 
virtues  that  poverty  is  commonly  thought 
to  favor;  it  is  a  harder  matter  to  put  faith 
in  man.  But  that  rooted  interest  in 
human  nature,  which  has  already  been 
spoken  of  as  cardinal  in  Mr.  Lowell's 
habit  of  mind,  as  it  helped  him  to  recon- 
cile poetry  with  the  life  of  rural  New  Eng- 
land, aided  also  in  the  generation  of  his 
democratic  faith,  for  when  a  man  is  once 
interested  in  his  fellows  he  is  already  half- 
way to  being  friends  with  them  and  thus 
coming  to  know  how  human  they  are.     To 


JAMES    RUSSELL    LOWELL.        339 

accustom  one's  self  to  disregard  the  acci- 
dents of  manner  and  station  sufficiently  to 
see  the  man  as  he  is,  to  have  a  clear  sight 
for  genuine  character  under  any  of  the 
disguises  of  unfamiliarity  and  prejudice, 
to  know  how  simple  and  how  common  are 
the  elements  that  go  to  the  making  of  man- 
hood, are  the  paths  to  belief  in  democracy ; 
and  to  do  this,  it  is  enough  to  live  out  of 
doors.  Culture  that  lives  in  the  library 
may  easily  miss  its  way.  The  Biglow 
Papers  by  themselves  would  be  sufficient 
proof  of  such  democracy  as  goes  to  make  a 
town-meeting;  but  the  American  idea  is  a 
larger  thing.  The  better  proof  which  Mr. 
Lowell  gave  of  his  quality  was  in  the 
recognition  he  gave  to  Lincoln.  He  was 
the  first  of  our  writers  to  see  what  name 
led  all  the  rest,  and  the  truth  which  he 
intimated  in  Blondel,  and  spoke  more 
plainly  in  prose,  he  made  at  last  shine  out 
in  the  most  famous  passage  of  his  great- 
est ode.  One  could  not  be  so  early  to 
perceive  this  unsuspected  fame  before  it 
filled  the  world  and  while  it  was  yet  in  the 
clouds  through  which  it  broke,  unless  faith 
in  man  came  natural  to  him.  It  was  so  in 
this  case,  and  Mr.  Lowell  understood  the 


340         JAMES    BUS  SELL    LOWELL. 

"new  birth  of  our  new  soil"  not  only  in 
the  fact  that  another  name  .was  given  to 
immortal  memory,  but  also  in  the  pro- 
founder  truth  that  the  soil  which  had  borne 
such  a  son  was  the  heir  of  a  new  age. 
With  all  the  faith  he  had  in  his  own  people 
of  the  past,  the  poet  looked  forward  to  the 
new  race  which  is  yet  forming  in  our 
womb;  and  nowhere  in  our  literature  is 
there  more  direct  expression  of  the  national 
faith  in  mere  manhood  than  in  a  few  great 
lines  of  these  patriotic  poems,  or  more 
soberly  and  explicitly  in  the  essay  upon 
Democracy.  It  may  seem  little  that  a  man 
should  believe  in  what  his  country  believes 
in ;  but  it  may  fairly  be  thought  that  Mr. 
Lowell,  from  his  place  in  conservative 
thought,  is  as  much  beforehand  in  his 
recognition  of  democracy  in  the  larger  sense 
as  he  was  earlier  than  others  in  his  recog- 
nition of  Lincoln. 

Besides  the  New  England  and  the  na- 
tional poems,  Mr.  Lowell  has  written  a  thii'd 
sort  that  stand  in  a  class  apart  and  have  a 
distinction,  if  not  so  unshared  as  these, 
shared  certainly  by  no  other  poet  of  this 
country.  They  are  what  would  ordinarily 
be  called  poems  of  culture,  the  verse  of  a 


JAMES    BUSSELL    LOWELL.         341 

man  deeply  imbued  with  the  literature  of 
the  past.  This  definition  rests  on  their 
form  rather  than  their  subject-matter. 
They  are  run  in  the  moulds  that  have  been 
handed  down  in  the  tradition  of  literature 
and  belong  to  the  gild.  Mr.  Lowell,  who 
has  shown  a  disposition  to  experiment  in 
verse  and  try  many  kinds,  has  used  a 
variety  of  these  set  measures,  but  in  two 
sorts  he  has  shown  a  hand  of  unrivaled 
mastery.  In  the  verses  Credidimus 
Jovem  Regnare  there  is,  perhaps,  the  best 
example  of  one  sort,  in  which  the  intel- 
lect finds  crystalline  expression;  modern 
as  it  is  in  substance  and  strongly  personal 
in  quality,  this  poem  is  at  once  recognized 
as  being  composed  in  a  classic  style  which 
is  neither  a  revival  nor  archaic,  but,  though 
written  yesterday,  has  the  look  of  century- 
old  verse  still  fresh.  Another  instance  is 
the  poem  upon  the  goldfishes,  one  of  the 
best  from  his  pen.  The  second  sort  in 
which  this  perfection  of  style  is  equally 
found  is  illustrated  by  the  letter  to  Curtis 
as  aptly  as  by  any  single  piece ;  the  terse- 
ness, ease,  and  finish  of  these  lines,  in 
which  compliment  blends  with  the  wisdom 
of  life  and  the  whole  is  subdued  within 


342        JAMES    RUSSELL    LOWELL. 

the  range  of  personal  talk  from  friend  to 
friend,  are  qualities  unique  in  our  poetry 
and  recall  the  habits  and  modes  of  utter- 
ance of  a  more  polished  lettered  age,  when 
intellect  and  manners  held  their  own 
beside  emotion,  and  the  literary  life  was 
more  complete  in  manly  powers.  In  both 
these  sorts  of  pedestrian  poetry,  if  the 
devotees  of  inspiration  will  insist  on  the 
distinction,  it  is  rather  the  man  of  cultiva- 
tion conversing  with  others  than  the  man 
of  genius  expressing  his  soul  whom  we 
find;  but  the  classic  literature  of  the 
world  owes  much  to  the  poets  who  have 
put  into  just  such  verse  the  mind  and 
morals  of  their  time  undisturbed  by  the 
strong  emotion  which  has  latterly  ruled  so 
supreme.  Mr.  Lowell  has  certainly 
strengthened  his  work  by  varying  it  with 
this  element  of  the  prose  of  verse  both  in 
the  octosyllabic  and  the  pentameter  forms. 
It  was  necessary,  too,  for  the  complete  ex- 
pression of  himself  that  he  should  give  otit 
his  literary  culture  in  art,  and  also  find 
fit  channels  for  that  power  of  pure  think- 
ing which  divides  with  the  poetic  impulse 
his  allegiance  to  literature.  For,  when 
the  end  is  reached  and  one  looks  back  over 


JAMES    RUSSELL    LOWELL.         343 

the  range  of  Mr.  Lowell's  poetical  works 
entire,  the  one  thing  that  binds  them  all 
together  and  runs  through  them,  besides 
that  unresting  interest  in  man  which  is 
their  blood,  is  the  equally  single  and 
widely  diffused  presence  of  thought,  which 
is  their  spirit.  In  no  poet  of  our  land,  at 
least,  is  there  to  be  found  so  large  a  num- 
ber of  single  thoughts,  to  apply  but  one 
test,  as  in  these  poems;  and  there  is  so 
little  need  to  say  that  in  none  other  is 
there  continuous  reflection  to  the  same 
degree,  that  Mr.  Lowell  is  reputed  rather 
for  an  excess  of  thought.  To  examine  the 
matter  further,  to  consider  such  a  poem 
as  The  Cathedral,  for  instance,  would 
force  this  sketch  beyond  its  limits;  but 
the  poems  of  pure  reflection  should  be  at 
least  referred  to.  So,  too,  the  type  of 
which  Endymion  is  the  most  eminent 
example  should  be  named,  and  the  poems 
in  which  Mr.  Lowell  has  sought  for  musi- 
cal effects  —  a  most  interesting  group  to 
the  student  of  poetry,  of  which,  perhaps. 
The  Fountain  of  Youth  is  the  most  re- 
markable—  should  not  be  left  unmen- 
tioned  even  in  the  briefest  account  of  his 
work.     It  is  not  within  the  scope  of  this 


344        JAMES    RUSSELL    LOWELL. 

paper,  however,  to  enter  upon  the  criti- 
cism of  Mr.  Lowell's  poetry  further  than 
to  indicate  such  cardinal  qualities  as  can 
be  brought  out  by  a  broad  treatment  of  it 
in  the  mass;  and  if  the  three  kinds  of 
verse  in  which  he  seems  most  to  excel,  — 
the  pastoral  of  his  own  people  in  their 
special  language,  the  poems  of  patriotism 
of  several  sorts,  but  particularly  those  in 
which  he  employs  his  peculiar  grave  and 
noble  style,  and  the  poems  distinguished 
by  classic  perfection  of  manner,  —  if  these 
have  been  discriminated,  and  in  the  course 
of  such  remarks  the  poet's  primary  in- 
stincts of  love  of  human  nature,  patriotic 
passion  and  faith,  and  devotion  to  the 
worth  and  charm  of  literature  in  both  its 
phases  of  thought  and  art,  have  been  made 
obvious,  the  little  that  was  aimed  at  has 
been  accomplished;  for  it  must  then  appear 
that  in  his  poetry  Mr.  Lowell  has  really 
expressed  himself  with  directness  and 
fullness,  and  in  the  best  of  his  work  with 
no  more  intrusion  of  the  self-consciousness 
of  culture  to  the  prejudice  of  the  native 
gift  than  was  necessary  to  make  his  poetry 
square  all  round  with  himself.  The  fact 
that  so  much  of  his  verse  of  all  sorts  has 


JAMES    BUS  SELL    LOWELL.         345 

the  quality  of  improvisation  is  of  itself 
proof  of  the  immediacy  of  his  method,  the 
genuineness  of  the  impulse,  the  truth  of 
his  statement  somewhere  that  he  has  ever 
waited  for  poetry  to  jEind  him  and  make 
itself  out  of  his  life.  It  results  from  this 
that  his  poetical  works  are  the  true  record 
of  that  life,  —  the  voice,  as  has  been  said, 
of  the  man,  and  immeasurably  more  com- 
plete as  an  expression  of  individuality 
than  the  larger  body  of  prose. 

If  one  must  pack  the  description  of  that 
body  of  prose  into  a  phrase,  —  and  little 
more  is  possible  here,  —  it  might  fairly  be 
said  that  (to  leave  the  journals  out  of  ac- 
count) the  essays  and  addresses  of  various 
kinds,  storing  the  results  of  scholarship 
and  reflection,  express  distinctively  the  au- 
thor's mind.  Interesting  as  the  political 
papers  are,  both  by  their  topics  and  the 
special  contribution  of  the  author  to 
thought  necessarily  more  or  less  gener- 
ally shared,  they  remain  subordinate  to 
his  critical  work  on  great  authors.  It 
is  in  the  literar}^  papers  proper  that  Mr. 
Lowell  has  hived  what  he  has  gathered 
of  wisdom  in  his  wide  range  through  lit- 
erature;  and  though  he  does   not   speak 


346        JAMES    RUSSELL    LOWELL. 

more  directly  in  them  than  in  his  speeches 
or  poems,  he  communicates  more  and  does 
it  in  a  more  exceptional  way.  Political 
thoughtfulness  characterizes  many  Ameri- 
cans, but  one  would  hesitate  if  asked  to 
name  Mr.  Lowell's  equals,  in  his  time,  in 
acquaintance  with  literature;  hardly  any 
name  but  Longfellow's  would  be  offered 
in  scholarly  rivalry  with  his  own  on  this 
ground ;  and  he  excels  Longfellow  by  virtue 
of  the  extraordinary  critical  power  which 
he  brings  to  bear  upon  literature.  He  is, 
indeed,  the  only  critic  of  high  rank  that 
our  literature  owns,  and  the  fineness  of 
his  quality  is  obscured  by  the  very  single- 
ness of  his  position,  since  there  are  none 
to  compare  him  with;  nor,  if  one  goes  to 
England  for  such  comparison,  is  the  case 
much  bettered,  for  he  surpasses  his  fellows 
there  with  equal  ease.  The  critical  fac- 
ulty is  so  rare  that  criticism  as  an  art 
suffers  in  repute  thereby,  and  its  results 
are  undervalued;  but  if  one  is  willing  to 
learn,  there  is  in  the  body  of  Mr.  Lowell's 
literary  papers  a  canon  of  pure  literature 
so  defined  in  intellectual  principles  and 
applied  with  such  variety  and  fruitfulness 
as  to  sufiice  for  an  education  in  literary 


JAMES    RUSSELL    LOWELL.         347 

taste;  and  this  education  is  of  the  best  sort 
since  it  teaches  how  to  see  rather  than  how 
to  analyze,  is  intuitive  instead  of  scien- 
tific, and  thus  follows  the  method  native 
to  literature  and  logically  belonging  to  it. 
The  results  of  this  method  in  what  Mr. 
Lowell  says  about  great  works  of  genius 
are,  nevertheless,  the  main  thing,  and  the 
value  of  them  is  sufficiently  appreciated 
by  students  of  literature.  It  ought  to  be 
observed,  perhaps,  that  the  wealth  of 
single  thought  which  has  already  been 
noticed  as  characterizing  his  poetry  is  as 
strikingly  found  in  these  prose  works  of 
every  sort.  Here,  too,  no  writer  of  the 
time  equals  him  except  Emerson ;  and  in 
Mr.  Lowell's  work  there  is  none  of  that 
Delphic  quality  which  sometimes  renders 
Emerson's  most  impressive  phrases  only 
an  appearance  of  thought.  Just  as  in  all 
of  Mr.  Lowell's  writings  one  always  seems 
in  direct  contact  with  the  man  speaking, 
so  his  words  are  always  weighted  with  that 
sense  and  common  judgment  which  make 
them  shells  so  impalpable  that  one  touches 
the  mind  through  them.  In  his  poetry  he 
gives  himself,  and  in  his  prose  he  yields 
up  his  wisdom;  to  do  this  so  immediately 


348        JAMES    RUSSELL    LOWELL. 

that  the  intervention  of  the  printed  page 
is  not  felt  is  the  last  victory  of  the  faculty 
of  expression  in  literature,  whether  it  be 
achieved  with  the  simplicity  of  genius  or 
by  the  perfection  of  art  through  culture, 
—  nor  are  the  two  ways  incompatible. 

Such,  briefly  stated,  is  the  impression 
made  by  a  broad  view  of  Mr.  Lowell's 
various  contributions  to  our  literature. 
Notwithstanding  his  acquirements  in  gen- 
eral and  the  special  perfection  of  his  lit- 
erary culture,  which  are  felt  throughout 
his  writings  in  their  mass,  it  would  appear 
that  his  self-expression,  whether  on  the 
more  scholarly,  or  the  civic,  or  the  simplest 
human  side,  has  been  more  spontaneous 
than  is  commonly  thought.  It  is  true  that 
the  spontaneity  of  a  complex  mind  wears 
a  different  aspect  from  that  of  a  simpler 
nature,  but  essentially  it  is  the  same,  and 
brings  with  it  the  same  reality  of  life,  the 
same  genuineness  and  sincerity,  on  ac- 
count of  which  it  is  justly  thought  to  be 
a  primary  element  in  the  genius  of  great 
writers  and  true  poets.  The  intrinsic 
worth  of  Mr.  Lowell's  works  has  been 
purposely  subordinated  here;  but  that 
part  of  criticism  of  them  is  not  in  any 


JAMES    RUSSELL    LOWELL.         349 

risk  of  misapprehension  or  forgetfulness. 
The  simplicity  of  his  nature,  as  shown  in 
his  works,  beneath  the  diversity  of  his 
interests  and  the  subtle  refinements  of  his 
intellectual  part,  the  unity  of  his  life  as 
poet,  citizen,  and  thinker,  and  the  har- 
monious interplay  of  his  faculties  one  with 
another,  and  especially  the  directness  of 
his  expression  in  every  mode  of  writing, 
have  not  been  hitherto  so  much  recognized 
as  was  right;  and  only  by  attending  to 
these  primary  traits  can  one  be  just  to  a 
great  writer. 


DAEWIN'S  LIFE. 

There  is  nothing  more  useful  to  observe 
in  the  life  of  Darwin  than  its  simplicity.  He 
was  the  man  of  science  as  Marlborough  was 
the  soldier,  and  he  was  only  that.  From 
boyhood  he  refused  all  other  ways  of  life 
and  knowledge  as  by  instinct,  and  in  his 
maturity  the  ill  health  which  ends  the  career 
of  ordinary  men  only  confirmed  him  in  his 
own  ;  he  was  always  the  collector,  the  inves- 
tigator, or  the  theorizer.  A  second  quality, 
which  is  general  enough  to  be  constantly  at- 
tracting attention,  is  the  thoroughly  English 
character  of  his  life.  The  stock  from  which 
he  sprang  was  rich  in  old  English  qualities 
of  vigor,  sense,  and  originality ;  the  house 
in  which  he  was  reared  offers  an  excellent 
type  of  English  family  life,  and  was  as  good 
a  place  to  be  born  in  as  could  be  desired  for 
any  son;  his  father's  strong  character,  the 
influences  of  his  older  relatives,  the  ordinary 
schools  he  attended,  the  smallest  incidents 
of  his  childhood,  even  the  jokes  of  his  play- 

350 


DARWIN'S  LIFE.  351 

fellows,  belong  to  the  moral  climate  of  the 
old  country  ;  and  it  does  not  need  the  grouse- 
shooting,  the  Cambridge  undergraduate  sup- 
pers, and  the  proposition  that  he  should 
choose  the  Church  for  a  profession  to  tell  us 
where  we  are.  Indeed,  Darwin  in  his  youth, 
spirited,  cordial,  and  overflowing  with  health, 
in  his  early  surroundings  of  English  strength 
and  kindness,  was  quite  as  attractive  as  in 
his  quieter,  and  in  some  respects  narrower, 
working  life. 

He  certainly  won  upon  the  men  whom  he 
met  at  the  outset  of  his  career.  "  Looking 
back,"  he  says,  "  I  infer  that  there  must 
have  been  something  in  me  a  little  superior 
to  the  common  i-un  of  youths ;  otherwise  the 
above-mentioned  men,  so  much  older  than 
me  and  higher  in  academical  position,  would 
never  have  allowed  me  to  associate  with 
them.  Certainly  I  was  not  aware  of  any 
such  superiority ;  and  I  remember  one  of 
my  sporting  friends.  Turner,  who  saw  me  at 
work  with  my  beetles,  saying  that  I  should 
some  day  be  a  Fellow  of  the  Royal  Society, 
and  the  notion  seemed  to  me  preposterous." 
Of  these  men  Henslow  was  the  most  at- 
tached to  him  and  interested  in  his  success. 
He  had  not  done  much  more  than  work  at 


352  DARWIN'S  LIFE. 

"  his  beetles,"  but  his  scientific  taste  was  al- 
ready the  ruling  genius  of  his  life.  It  is 
surprising  to  see  how  completely  he  remained 
untouched  by  the  ordinary  influences  of  a 
university  training;  he  thought  in  later 
years  that  his  scholastic  education  had  been 
a  waste  of  time,  and  he  seems  justified  when 
one  perceives  how  little  good  he  got  from 
it.  His  was  a  mind  that  belonged  to  him- 
self, self-fed,  almost  self-made ;  he  lived  his 
own  life,  and  not  another's,  from  the  start ; 
though  his  taste  for  collecting  was  heredi- 
tary, the  persistence  with  which  he  gave 
himself  up  to  following  it,  the  completeness 
of  his  surrender  to  his  one  predominant  tal- 
ent, was  his  own.  He  was,  nevertheless, 
better  furnished  with  intellectual  power  than 
he  appears  to  have  believed.  "  From  my 
earliest  youth,"  he  writes,  "  I  have  had  the 
strongest  desire  to  understand  or  explain 
whatever  I  observed,  that  is,  to  group  all 
facts  under  some  general  laws."  It  is  true 
that  he  started  from  some  specific  facts,  had 
a  definite,  tangible  problem  to  solve  ;  but  he 
felt  the  necessity  to  solve  it.  He  differed 
from  the  collector  in  this,  that  his  curiosity 
was  not  exhausted  in  gathering  materials, 
but  he  must  also  order  his  materials ;  or  to 


DARWIN'S  LIFE.  353 

put  it  exactly,  must  organize  his  knowledge. 
This  shows  the  great  vitality  of  his  reason- 
ing faculty,  which  within  its   special  range 
was  really  precocious.     The  native  strength 
of  his  mind   in  this  direction  is  also  illus- 
trated by  the  great  pleasure  he  derived  from 
reading  Paley's  Evidences.     "  The  logic  of 
this  book,"  he  declares,  "  and,  as  I  may  add, 
of  his  Natural  Theology,  gave  me  as  much 
delight  as  did  Euclid.     The  careful  study 
of  these  works,  without  attempting  to  learn 
any  part  by  rote,  was  the  only  part  of  the 
academical  course  which,  as  I  then  felt  and 
as  I  still  believe,  was  of  the  least  use  to  me 
in  the   education  of  my  mind.      I  did  not 
at  that  time  trouble  myself  about  Paley's 
premises ;  and  taking  these  in  trust,  I  was 
charmed  and  convinced  by  the  long  line  of 
argumentation."     He  acknowledges  his  in- 
ability in  later  life  to  follow  trains   of  ab- 
stract reasoning,  such  as  make  the  matter  of 
metaphysics  ;  but  he  was  quite  aware  of  his 
aptitude  for  inductive  reasoning,  and   does 
not  overestimate  its  influence   in  the  com- 
position of  his  great  work.     "  Some  of  my 
critics  have  said,  '  Oh,  he  is  a  good  observer, 
but  he  has  no  power  of  reasoning ! '     I  do 
not  think  that  this  can  be  true,  for  the  Ori- 


354  DARWIN'S  LIFE. 

gin  of  Species  is  one  long  argument  from 
the  beginning  to  the  end,  and  it  has  con- 
vinced not  a  few  able  men."  His  taste  for 
collecting  was  a  sine  qua  non,  but  it  was 
this  power  of  reasoning,  however  limited  in 
range,  that  made  him  great ;  and  it  is  as 
clearly  to  be  seen  in  operation  in  his  forma- 
tive years  as  was  the  passion  for  collecting 
which  was  to  feed  it  with  material  to  work 
upon.  His  vivacity  and  energy  no  doubt 
counted  much  in  winning  for  him  the  friend- 
ship of  elder  men,  and  he  possessed  that  in- 
definable but  potent  quality  of  personal  at- 
tractiveness ;  but  Henslow  in  the  beginning, 
as  Lyell  later,  must  have  seen  in  him  that 
happy  conjunction  of  tastes  and  faculties 
which  made  his  genius  for  science,  or  at 
least  they  must  have  perceived  the  promise 
of  it. 

All  the  circumstances  of  his  life  seem  to 
have  conspired  to  favor  this  special  endow- 
ment. The  very  fact  that  the  classics  did 
nothing  for  him  helped  him :  he  was  relieved 
from  the  confusion  caused  by  complex  and 
disturbing  elements  in  a  varied  education ; 
he  had  no  difficulty  in  making  his  choice ; 
he  was  not  afterward  drawn  aside  by  the 
existence  of  other   unsatisfied  tastes,  artifi- 


DARWIN'S  LIFE.  355 

cially  cultivated ;  he  had  no  ambition  for 
that  roundness  of  develojiment  which  is  a 
fetich  of  modern  times ;  he  did  not  fritter 
away  his  time  and  energy  in  directions  in 
which  he  could  not  excel.  It  is  not  meant 
to  hold  up  his  luck  in  this  respect  as  exem- 
plary good  fortune,  but  only  to  emphasize 
the  way  in  which  it  told  on  his  success.  He 
was  not  less  happy  in  the  exterior  circum- 
stances of  his  life,  and  in  those  things  which 
come  by  a  kind  of  hazard.  His  appoint- 
ment to  the  Beagle  was  a  Napoleonic  oppor- 
tunity, and  in  looking  back  he  realized  its 
value  to  the  full :  "  The  voyage  of  the  Bea- 
gle has  been  by  far  the  most  important 
event  in  my  life,  and  has  determined  my 
whole  career ;  yet  it  depended  on  so  small 
a  circumstance  as  my  uncle  offering  to  drive 
me  thirty  miles  to  Shrewsbury,  which  few 
uncles  would  have  done,  and  on  such  a  trifle 
as  the  shape  of  my  nose."  But  one  ought 
not  to  exaggerate  the  element  of  chance ; 
and  though  Captain  Fitz-roy  had  continued 
to  disapprove  of  Darwin's  nose,  and  his  un- 
cle had  not  interfered  to  overcome  the  elder 
Darwin's  objection  to  the  voyage  on  the 
score  that  it  would  be  an  unbecoming  ad- 
venture for  a  prospective  clergyman,  and  on 


356  DARWIN'S  LIFE. 

other  equally  good  or  better  grounds,  yet  we 
might  have  had  our  great  naturalist.  The 
voyage  of  the  Beagle,  nevertheless,  was  the 
turning-point  of  Darwin's  life.  He  obtained 
in  the  course  of  it  the  first  real  training:  of 
his  mind ;  it  brought  before  him  several  de- 
partments of  science  in  such  a  way  that  he 
approached  them  with  active  and  original 
thoughts,  and  was  constantly  forced  into  an 
inquiring  and  bold  attitude  toward  the  novel 
material  he  found ;  it  gave  him  five  years 
alone  with  science,  and  free  from  any  near 
master  to  whom  he  might  have  formed  the 
habit  of  deferring.  Huxley  does  not  over- 
state the  material  advantages  that  this  train- 
ing brought  with  it :  "  In  Physical  Geogra- 
phy, in  Geology  proper,  in  Geographical 
Distribution,  and  in  Palaeontology,  he  had 
acquired  an  extensive  practical  training  dur- 
ing the  voyage  of  the  Beagle.  He  knew  of 
his  own  knowledge  the  way  in  which  the 
raw  materials  of  these  branches  of  science 
are  acquired,  and  was  therefore  a  most  com- 
petent judge  of  the  speculative  strain  they 
would  bear.  That  which  he  needed,  after 
his  return  to  England,  was  a  corresponding 
acquaintance  with  Anatomy  and  Develop- 
ment, and  their  relations  to  Taxonomy,  and 


DARWIN'S  LIFE.  357 

he  acquired  this  by  his  Cirripede  work."  It 
is  to  be  noticed  that  during  his  voyage  in 
the  Beagle  he  became  convinced  of  the 
"  wonderful  superiority  of  Lyell's  manner 
of  treating  geology"  over  every  other  au- 
thor's. This  is  an  illustration,  like  that 
drawn  from  Paley,  of  the  character  of  his 
mind  as  primarily  a  reasoning  mind ;  for 
what  he  recognized  in  Lyell  was  a  method. 
It  was  on  this  voyage,  too,  that  he  became 
ambitious  ;  he  began  to  believe  that  he  might 
add  to  the  stock  of  human  knowledge,  and 
the  stimulation  of  the  welcome  his  success 
was  meeting  in  England  was  evidently 
keenly  felt.  He  put  his  whole  heart  into 
the  work,  and  few  passages  are  more  stir- 
ring than  those  which  describe  his  zeal  in 
his  first  really  scientific  enthusiasm,  after 
he  had  given  up  his  gun  as  of  less  use  than 
his  eye,  and  had  found  sport,  even  with  his 
fond  love  of  it,  an  inferior  pleasure  to  the 
pursuit  of  knowledge  ;  then,  alone  in  the 
Andes  and  the  Southern  Ocean,  he  came  to 
his  majority. 

Mr.  Huxley,  in  the  passage  cited,  has 
noted  the  need  Darwin  had  for  further 
training,  particularly  as  a  naturalist.  He 
obtained  this  by  his  work  on  the  Cirripedes, 


358  DARWIN'S  LIFE. 

an  eight  years'  labor.  This  concluded  his 
education.  Of  the  value  of  it  merely  as 
training  and  to  himself,  Sir  Joseph  Hooker 
says  :  "  Your  father  recognized  three  stages 
in  his  career  as  a  biologist :  the  mere  col- 
lector at  Cambridge  ;  the  collector  and  ob- 
server in  the  Beagle,  and  for  some  years 
afterwards  ;  and  the  trained  naturalist  after, 
and  only  after,  the  Cirripede  work.  That 
he  was  a  thinker  all  along  is  true  enough." 
Huxley  says  that  Darwin  never  did  a  wiser 
thing  than  when  he  devoted  himself  to  these 
years  of  patient  toil.  Darwin  himself  does 
not  indicate  that  he  purposely  chose  to  do 
this  monograph  in  order  to  educate  himself, 
and  he  doubts  whether  it  was  worth  the 
time.  He  seems  to  have  been  gradually 
drawn  into  it,  and  to  have  finished  it  be- 
cause he  had  gone  so  far.  When  he  had 
done  with  it,  at  any  rate,  if  not  before,  he 
was  a  thoroughly  furnished  man  for  such  in- 
vestigation as  was  to  be  his  title  to  lasting 
fame.  He  had  come  to  be  thus  equipped 
by  the  mere  course  of  his  life  ;  by  beetles 
at  Cambridge,  and  the  Beagle,  and  the  Cir- 
ripedes.  Yet  if  he  had  planned  his  educa- 
tion from  the  start  for  the  express  purpose 
of  dealing  in  the  most  masterly  way  with 


DAEWIN'S  LIFE.  359 

the  mass  of  diversified  details  out  of  which 
the  Origin  of  Species  and  the  other  deriva- 
tive coordinate  works  grew,  it  is  hard  to  see 
in  what  way  his  course  could  have  been 
improved.  The  ill-health  which  seized  him 
so  soon  was  almost  a  blessing  in  disguise, 
since  it  isolated  him  from  the  distractions 
of  modern  London,  made  him  value  his  life 
and  his  time,  and  possibly,  by  the  economy 
of  his  strength  which  it  necessitated,  aided 
as  much  as  it  hindered  him. 

One  need  not  follow  him  through  the 
composition  of  his  books,  or  even  through 
the  elaboration  of  the  theory  of  natural  se- 
lection, during  the  many  years  that  it  was 
growing  in  his  laboratory  of  notes.  For 
him  the  formulating  of  that  theory  was  in- 
evitable :  it  seems,  as  one  observes  him,  nat- 
ural enough  to  have  been  foretold  of  him  ; 
but  it  followed,  not  from  his  position,  which 
another  man  might  have  occupied,  but  from 
his  genius.  The  qualities  of  mind  which  it 
required  were  not  many,  and  one  under- 
stands readily  why  it  is  so  commonly  said 
that  all  is  explained  by  his  power  of  obser- 
vation and  its  vast  range  ;  but  it  did  require 
one  high  faculty  of  the  mind,  and  a  rare 
one,  which  Darwin  had  preeminently  among 


360  DARWIN'S  LIFE. 

tlie  men  o£  his  time,  —  the  faculty,  namely, 
of  discerning  the  lines  of  inquiry  in  a  mass 
of  as  yet  nnrelated  facts.  He  somewhere 
says  that  he  had  found  it  harder,  perhaps, 
to  put  the  question  than  it  was  to  reach  the 
answer.  This  power  is  the  great  economizer 
of  mental  energy,  in  any  branch  of  investi- 
gation ;  it  is,  to  the  man  who  has  it,  equiv- 
alent to  a  compass ;  and  to  Darwin  it  was 
the  one  talent  without  which  his  stores  of 
knowledge  would  have  been  no  more  than  a 
heap  of  unclassified  specimens  in  a  museum 
cellar.  Moral  and  physical  qualities  he  had, 
besides  ;  his  patience  and  his  practiced  vis- 
ion were  invaluable  ;  but  it  was  the  intel- 
lectual part  that  penetrated  the  secrets  of 
nature.  This  sense  of  the  problem,  this  eye 
for  the  question,  was  most  serviceable  to  his 
success.  His  acuteness  in  perceiving  the 
importance  of  the  infinitely  little,  which  is 
often  mentioned  as  one  of  his  distinguishing 
traits,  was  only  an  incident  of  this  larger 
endowment ;  and  his  power  to  make  other 
men  useful  to  him,  specialists  in  horticulture 
or  physiology,  or  even  common  observing 
men,  was  only  the  knowledge  of  how  to  put 
practical  questions.  The  point  is  worth  em- 
phasizing, because  in  this  age  of  the  accu- 


DARWIN'S  LIFE.  361 

mulation  of  scientific  detail  it  is  too  apt  to 
be  forgotten  that  the  thinking  mind  is  as 
rare  in  science  as  in  other  departments, 
and  is,  nevertheless,  the  indispensable  thing 
which  makes  a  man  great. 

Here  it  is  worth  while  to  advert  to  that 
persistent  discussion  respecting  the  nature 
of  a  modern  education,  which  Darwin's  ex- 
perience is  bound  to  bring  forward  with 
renewed  vigor.  His  testimony,  both  in  the 
chart  of  himself  which  he  gave  Mr.  Galton 
and  in  the  account  he  wrote  for  his  children, 
is  unequivocal.  He  says  he  was  self-taught ; 
that  his  training  at  the  university  was  of  no 
use  to  him,  speaking  generally  ;  and  that  the 
classics  in  particular  were  barren.  He  seems 
to  be  quite  correct  in  his  statement ;  the 
claim  that  his  powers  of  observation  and 
comparison  were  really  developed  by  school- 
boy attention  to  Latin  and  Greek  termina- 
tions is  purely  pedagogical ;  nor  is  there  any 
reason  to  question  that  men  of  genius  can 
be  successful,  achieve  eminent  greatness  for 
themselves,  and  do  work  of  the  highest  value 
to  societv  without  immediate  oblisjation  to 
those  studies  usually  called  the  humanities. 
This  is  nothing  new.  Instances  of  self-edu- 
cation for  special  careers  are  to  be  found  in 


362  DARWIN'S  LIFE. 

other  walks  than  those  of  science :  in  war, 
in  administration,  and  generally  in  active 
life,  and  not  infrequently  in  literature  itself. 
But  it  is  worth  observing  what  testimony 
these  volumes  bear  to  the  wonderful  vital- 
ity of  the  Greek  intelligence.  Speaking  of 
the  theory  of  Pangenesis,  Darwin  writes  to 
a  correspondent  that  the  views  of  Hippoc- 
rates "  seem  almost  identical  with  mine,  — 
merely  a  change  of  terms,  and  an  applica- 
tion of  them  to  classes  of  facts  necessarily 
unknown  to  the  old  philosopher."  Again, 
he  writes  of  Aristotle :  "  From  quotations 
which  I  had  seen  I  had  a  high  notion  of 
Aristotle's  merits,  but  I  had  not  the  most 
remote  notion  what  a  wonderful  man  he 
was.  Linnseus  and  Cuvier  have  been  my 
two  gods,  though  in  very  different  ways,  but 
they  were  mere  schoolboys  to  old  Aristotle. 
...  I  never  realized,  before  reading  your 
book,  to  what  an  enormous  consummation 
of  labor  we  owe  even  our  common  know- 
ledge." A  more  striking  passage  is  that  of 
Huxley's,  where  he  says  :  "  The  oldest  of  all 
philosophies,  that  of  evolution,  was  bound 
hand  and  foot  and  cast  into  utter  darkness 
during  the  millennium  of  theological  scho- 
lasticism.      But   Darwin   poured   new   life- 


DAEWIN'S  LIFE.  363 

blood  into  the  ancient  frame ;  the  bonds 
burst,  and  the  revivified  thought  of  ancient 
Greece  has  proved  itself  to  be  a  more  ade- 
quate expression  of  the  universal  order  of 
things  than  any  of  the  schemes  which  have 
been  accepted  by  the  credulity  and  welcomed 
by  the  superstition  of  seventy  later  genera- 
tions of  men."  Rediscovery,  however,  is 
not  obligation ;  and,  perhaps,  if  Darwin  had 
been  thoroughly  imbued  with  the  Greek 
mode  of  looking  upon  the  universe,  he  would 
not  have  been  really  indebted  to  it  for  his 
own  views ;  for  he  went  upon  different 
grounds  in  forming  his  conceptions.  The 
real  question  is,  not  whether  Darwin  suc- 
ceeded without  Greek  influences,  but  whether 
he  lost  anything  because  of  his  failure  to 
assimilate  them.  The  answer  seems  plain. 
It  is  written  all  over  these  pages,  and  is  ex- 
pressly given  by  Darwin  in  more  than  one 
passage. 

No  words  can  be  too  strong  to  express  the 
lovableness  of  Darwin's  personality,  or  the 
moral  beauty  of  his  character.  In  his  biog- 
raphy, it  is  true,  he  is  presented  as  the  man 
of  science  ;  but  he  is  seen  occasionally  in 
other  aspects.  He  was  a  dutiful,  respect- 
ful, and  affectionate  son,  at  the  outset  of  his 


364  DARWIN'S  LIFE. 

life.  He  thought  his  father  was  sometimes 
unjust,  but  he  always  spoke  of  him  as  "  the 
wisest  man  he  ever  knew  ;  "  and  there  is  a 
touching  passage  in  one  of  his  letters  home, 
when  his  father  had  sent  him  a  note  :  "  I  al- 
most cried  for  pleasure  at  receiving  it ;  it 
was  very  kind,  thinking  of  writing  to  me." 
He  was  also,  in  his  turn,  an  admirable  fa- 
ther, considerate,  patient,  and  very  tender. 
One  of  his  sons  tells  a  most  significant  anec- 
dote of  once  having  drawn  on  himself  some 
indignant  exclamation,  "almost  with  fury," 
and  the  end  of  it  being  that  "  next  morning, 
at  seven  o'clock  or  so,  he  came  into  my  bed- 
room and  sat  on  my  bed,  and  said  he  had 
not  been  able  to  sleep,  from  the  thought  that 
he  had  been  so  angry  with  me,  and  after 
a  few  more  kind  words  he  left  me."  His 
description  of  his  little  daughter  who  died  is 
of  itself  enough  to  show  the  extraordinarily 
fine  quality  of  his  affections  ;  and  in  general 
his  relations  with  his  children  are  almost 
ideal  in  gentleness,  kindness,  and  comjian- 
ionableness.  He  was  also  a  good  friend 
and  acquaintance.  In  a  word,  in  his  private 
social  relations  he  was  exemplary,  judged 
by  the  standard  of  a  high  civilization.  He 
was  not  without  a  sense,  too,  of  public  duty. 


DAB  WIN'S  LIFE.  365 

He  felt  strongly  only  upon  the  subject  of 
slavery,  and  this  was  largely  because  of  his 
travels  in  slave  countries.  He  was  inter- 
ested in  philanthropic  efforts  to  some  de- 
gree, and  especially  in  furthering  the  in- 
crease of  kindness  to  animals.  But  he  was 
remote  from  public  affairs,  and  led  even  in 
his  sympathies  a  life  somewhat  narrowly 
confined  to  his  own  circle  and  his  work  in 
science.  In  other  parts  of  his  character 
there  is  nothing  to  displease.  He  was  mod- 
est and  just,  and  free  from  envy,  conscien- 
tious to  an  extreme,  and  as  ready  to  give  as 
to  receive  help  in  all  ways.  He  was  more 
pleased  with  his  fame  than  he  acknow- 
ledged; he  cared  deeply  for  the  success  of 
his  theory,  and  was  well  aware  of  its  in- 
fluence on  his  ov/n  reputation  as  one  to  be 
classed  with  Newton's  ;  he  liked  praise  and 
distinction,  though  he  limited  his  desire  to 
the  commendation  and  respect  of  natural- 
ists ;  but  this  is  only  to  wish  to  be  approved 
by  the  most  competent  judges.  He  was  fair 
to  Wallace,  and  exhibited  the  best  of  tem- 
pers toward  him  ;  but  between  the  lines  one 
reads  that  he  was  nettled  and  annoyed  by 
the  incident,  and  it  must  be  concluded  that 
as  he  was  ambitious  in  youth,  he  was  de- 


366  DAB  WIN'S  LIFE. 

sirous  of  having  Ms  due  in  manhood,  and 
valued  fame. 

This  was  a  character  which  might  well 
sjiare  the  humanities.  The  fact  remains  that 
he  did  spare  them.  What  he  lost  was  cul- 
ture. The  confession  that  he  makes  of  the 
gradual  atrophy  of  his  aesthetic  tastes  will 
be  long  quoted  as  one  of  the  most  remark- 
able facts  of  his  life.  He  began  with  a  sus- 
ceptibility to  music,  which  by  his  son's  ac- 
count he  did  not  lose;  with  a  liking  for 
poetry,  such  that  he  read  The  Excursion 
twice,  and  he  would  not  have  read  it  except 
for  pleasure ;  and  he  used  to  take  Milton 
with  him  in  his  pocket.  In  art  he  went 
but  a  little  way,  if,  indeed,  he  ever  really 
had  any  eye  for  it.  He  was  religious,  as  an 
English  boy  usually  is ;  but  his  interest  in 
belief  regarding  religious  subjects  died  out, 
and,  what  is  of  more  consequence,  the  emo- 
tions which  were  called  out  by  it  in  early 
life  ceased  to  be  exercised.  There  was  a 
deadening,  in  other  words,  of  all  his  nat- 
ure, except  so  far  as  it  was  fed  by  his  work, 
his  family,  and  his  friends  in  its  intellect- 
ual and  social  parts.  So  complete  was  this 
change  that  it  affected  even  his  appreciation 
of   beautiful  scenery,  which  had  evidently 


DARWIN'S  LIFE.  367 

given  him  keen  delight  in  his  youth  and 
travels.  He  dates  this  change  from  just 
after  his  thirtieth  year,  when  he  became  ab- 
sorbed in  scientific  pursuits  as  his  profession. 
Something,  no  doubt,  and  perhaps  much,  is 
to  be  set  down  to  the  effect  of  his  ill-health, 
which  left  him  with  diminished  energies  for 
any  recreation ;  his  strength  was  exhausted 
in  his  few  hours  of  work.  He  was  himself 
so  convinced  that  his  life  had  been  narrowed 
in  these  ways,  that  he  says  if  he  had  it  to 
live  over  he  would  have  planned  to  give  a 
certain  time  habitually  to  poetry. 

It  would  be  too  much  to  say  that  the  fail- 
ure of  Darwin  to  appropriate  the  humane 
elements  in  his  university  education  accounts 
in  any  perceptible  degree  for  these  defects. 
In  culture,  as  in  science,  the  self-making 
power  of  the  man  counts  heavily  ;  and  there 
is  such  inefficiency  in  those  whose  duty  it  is 
to  give  youth  a  liberal  education  from  clas- 
sical sources,  there  are  such  wrong  methods 
and  unintelligent  aims  in  the  universities, 
that  it  might  easily  prove  to  be  the  case  that 
a  student  with  the  most  coi-dial  tempera- 
ment toward  the  humanities  would  profit 
only  imperfectly  by  his  residence  at  seats  of 
learning.      In   spite    of   these   reservations 


368  DABWIN'S  LIFE. 

however,  the  Greek  culture  is  the  historical 
source  of  what  are  traditionally  the  higher 
elements  in  our  intellectual  life,  and  has 
been  for  most  cultivated  men  the  practical 
discipline  of  their  minds.  But  it  is  to  be 
further  observed  that  the  example  of  Dar- 
win, if  it  should  be  set  up  as  showing  that 
Greek  culture  is  unnecessary  in  modern 
days,  goes  just  as  directly  and  completely  to 
prove  that  all  literary  education,  as  well  by 
modern  as  by  ancient  authors,  is  superfluous. 
It  is  enough  to  indicate  to  what  a  length  the 
argument  must  be  carried,  if  it  is  at  all  ad- 
mitted. The  important  matter  is  rather  the 
question,  How  much  was  Darwin's  life  in- 
jured for  himself  by  his  loss  of  culture,  in 
the  fact  that  some  of  those  sources  of  intel- 
lectual delight  which  are  reputed  the  most 
precious  for  civilized  man  were  closed  to 
him? 

The  blank  page  in  this  charming  biogra- 
phy is  the  page  of  spiritual  life.  There  is 
nothing  written  there.  The  entire  absence 
of  an  element  which  enters  commonly  into 
all  men's  lives  in  some  degree  is  a  circum- 
stance as  significant  as  it  is  astonishing. 
Never  was  a  man  more  alive  to  what  is 
visible  and  tangible,  or  in  any  way  matter  of 


DARWIN'S  LIFE.  369 

sensation  ;  on  the  sides  of  his  nature  where 
an  appeal  could  be  made,  never  was  a  man 
more  responsive ;  but  there  were  parts  in 
which  he  was  blind  and  dull.  Just  as  the 
boy  failed  to  be  interested  in  many  things, 
the  man  failed  too ;  and  he  disregarded 
what  did  not  interest  him  with  the  same 
ease  at  sixty  as  at  twenty.  What  did  in- 
terest him  was  the  immediately  present,  and 
he  dealt  with  it  admirably,  both  in  the  in- 
tellectual and  the  moral  world  ;  but  what 
was  remote  was  as  if  it  were  not.  The  spir- 
itual element  in  life  is  not  remote,  but  it  is 
not  matter  of  sensation,  and  Darwin  lived  as 
if  there  were  no  such  thing ;  it  belongs  to  the 
region  of  emotion  and  imagination,  and  those 
perceptions  which  deal  with  the  nature  of 
man  in  its  contrast  with  the  material  world. 
Poetry,  art,  music,  the  emotional  influences 
of  nature,  the  idealizations  of  moral  life,  are 
the  means  by  which  men  take  possession  of 
this  inner  world  of  man  ;  to  which,  for  man 
at  least,  nature  in  all  its  immensity  is  sub- 
sidiary. Darwin's  insensibility  to  the  higher 
life  —  for  so  men  agree  to  call  it  —  was 
partly,  if  not  wholly,  induced  by  his  absorp- 
tion in  scientific  pursuits  in  the  spirit  of  ma- 
terialism.   We  praise  him  for  his  achieve- 


370  DAE  WIN'S  LIFE. 

ments,  we  admire  his  character,  and  we  feel 
the  full  charm  of  his  temperament;  he  de- 
lights us  in  every  active  manifestation  of  his 
nature.  We  do  not  now  learn  for  the  first 
time  that  a  man  may  be  good  without  being 
religious,  and  successful  without  being  liber- 
ally educated,  and  worthy  of  honor  without 
being  spiritual ;  but  a  man  may  be  all  this 
and  yet  be  incomplete.  Great  as  Darwin 
was  as  a  thinker,  and  winning  as  he  remains 
as  a  man,  those  elements  in  which  he  was 
deficient  are  the  noblest  part  of  our  nature. 


BYRON'S   CENTENARY. 

The  absence  of  any  widespread  interest 
in  the  centenary  of  Lord  Byron  is  a  mar- 
velous illustration  of  the  vicissitudes  of  lit- 
erary reputation.  Only  in  Greece  was  pub- 
lic notice  taken  of  it.  The  brilliancy  with 
which  his  fame  burst  forth,  the  unexampled 
rapidity  with  which  it  spread  through  Eu- 
rope, the  powerful  influence  it  continued  to 
exert  on  the  youth  of  the  next  age,  were  to 
the  men  who  witnessed  them  sure  sifrns  of 
the  magnitude  of  his  future  renown.  The 
decadence  into  which  it  has  fallen  would 
have  been  incredible  to  them.  It  was  By- 
ron's distinction  to  have  been  the  first  man 
of  letters  who  enjoyed  an  international  rep- 
utation at  once  ;  and  one  can  hardly  credit 
the  fact  that  he  has  shrunk  so  wonderfully. 
In  the  month  of  his  death  Sir  Walter  Scott, 
in  a  brief  article  which  attracted  wide  atten- 
tion, said  that  it  seemed  almost  as  if  the  sun 
in  heaven  had  been  extinguished  ;  and  when 
Scott  soon  followed  him,  Landor,  writing  to 

371 


372  BYRON'S  CENTENARY. 

Crabb  Robinson,  remarked  that  the  death  of 
these  two  had  "  put  the  fashionable  world 
into  deep  mourning,"  and  drew  gloomy  pre- 
dictions, in  the  well-known  manner  of  con- 
temporaries, because  the  great  men  were 
leaving  no  successors. 

Something  of  the  shock  of  Byron's  death 
and  of  the  exaltation  of  his  genius  at  the 
moment  was  due  to  the  manner  in  which  he 
met  his  end  ;  he  had  fallen  like  one  of  his 
own  heroes,  died  in  a  cause,  and  appealed  to 
the  romantic  feeling  of  the  age.  Even  then, 
however,  to  admire  him  was  found  to  be  a 
different  thing  from  approving  him.  When 
the  thirty-seven  guns  had  been  fired  at  Mis- 
solonghi,  and  the  Turks  had  responded  with 
"  an  exultant  volley,"  and  the  ship  had 
brought  home  the  remains,  the  Abbey  was 
refused,  and  he  was  buried  in  the  common 
soil  of  England.  Two  incidents  of  the  fu- 
neral bring  him  very  near  to  us.  Lady  Car- 
oline Lamb  met  the  cortege  as  she  was  driv- 
ing, and,  on  being  told,  in  answer  to  her 
question,  that  it  was  Byron's,  fainted  in  her 
carriage  ;  and  Mary  Shelley,  as  she  saw  the 
procession  winding  down,  reflected  on  the 
short-sightedness  of  human  life,  asking  who 
could  have  foretold  at  Lerici  such  changes 
as  she  had  witnessed  in  two  little  years. 


BYEON'S  CENTENARY.  373 

Hobhouse,  with  all  his  efforts,  could  raise 
only  a  thousand  pounds  for  a  memorial,  but 
with  this  he  got  Thorwaldsen   to   make    a 
statue  which  was  sent  to  England  in  1834. 
The  Abbey  was  again  refused,  and,  to  the 
discredit    of   the  nation,  this  work  was    al- 
lowed to  remain  stored  away  in  the  Custom- 
house eleven  years,  because  no  fit  place  could 
be  got  to  put  it  in.     At  last,  in  1845,  Dr. 
Whewell  gave  permission  to  set  it  up  in  the 
Library  of  Trinity,   which  it    still   adorns. 
Thirty  years  later  came  the  miserable  fiasco 
of  Beaconsfield's  Committee,  which,  far  from 
making  Newstead  Abbey  a  national  posses- 
sion and  gathering  there  the  relics  of  Byron, 
placed  in  Hamilton  Park  (other  sites  being- 
refused)  that  statue  of  the  poet  leaning  on 
the   rocks,  with  his    dog  Boatswain  beside 
him,  which  can  only  be  described  as  popu- 
lar melodrama  in  stone,  beautiful  only  for 
the  mass  of  red    marble  which  the  Greek 
Government  gave  for  its  base.     It  is  to  be 
remarked,  also,  that  at  this  time  the  Abbey 
was  a  third  time  practically  refused,  as  Dean 
Stanley,  out  of  respect  to  the  action  of  his 
two  predecessors,  but  not  apparently  for  any 
other  reason,  precluded  application  for  erect- 
ing a  tablet  there  by  a  letter  in  which  he 


374  BYRON'S  CENTENARY. 

said  he  preferred  the  subject  should  not  be 
brought  before  him. 

The  history  of  monuments,  however,  is  not 
necessarily  proof  of  fame.  Others  of  Eng- 
land's greatest  do  not  sleep  in  the  Abbey, 
and  the  hero  not  infrequently  waits  for  his 
statue  a  long  age.  The  place  of  fame  is  on 
the  lips  of  men,  and  Macaulay,  when  Moore's 
Life  came  out,  could  speak  of  Byron  as  "  the 
most  celebrated  man  in  Europe."  The  de- 
cline of  his  vogue  was  nevertheless  rapid 
and  unmistakable.  We  all  remember  Car- 
lyle's  oracle  :  "  Close  thy  Byron  ;  open  thy 
Goethe."  This  must  have  been  about  1840. 
But,  unfortunately,  as  one  writer  observes, 
to  open  Goethe  is  to  return  to  Byron's  great- 
ness. Did  not  Goethe  tell  Eckermann  that 
a  man  of  Byron's  eminence  would  not  come 
again,  nor  such  a  tragedy  as  Cain  ?  He 
thought  him  greater  than  Milton  —  "  vast 
and  widely  varied,"  whereas  the  latter  was 
only  simple  and  stately.  Perhaps,  as  we 
have  been  told,  Goethe  was  flattered'  by 
Byron's  imitation. 

Whatever  was  the  reason,  the  critical 
judgment  of  Goethe  is  one  to  be  weighed 
with  regard  to  Byron,  and  to  himself  also, 
for  that  matter.    What  part  Goethe's  praise 


BYRON'S  CENTENARY.  375 

may  have  had  in  making  Byron  the  hero 
of  "  Young-  Germany  "  we  have  no  means 
of  determining,  but  his  works  were  vital  in 
the  new  age  there,  and  still  his  hold  seems 
greater  on  the  Germans,  if  we  may  judge  by 
the  test  of  translations  and  biography,  than 
it  is  elsewhere  on  the  Continent.  Heine 
was  more  than  touched  by  him,  though  he 
was  far  from  being  his  duplicate,  and  could 
see  the  humorous  side  of  those  young  Pa- 
risians —  Musset  the  foremost  —  who  were 
melancholy  in  the  full  glow  of  first  man- 
hood, and  went  about  in  despair  dining 
sumptuously  every  day.  One  pities  Musset, 
for  Byron  was,  as  much  as  another  man  can 
be,  the  secret  of  his  fate.  Lamartine  caught 
only  the  sentimentality  of  Byron,  but  Mus- 
set assimilated  his  darker  spirit,  his  reckless- 
ness, and  license,  and  skepticism,  and  trans- 
muted his  very  coarseness  into  a  Parisian 
vulgarity.  Stendhal  and  Sainte-Beuve  paid 
tribute  to  him ;  and,  to  cut  the  subject  short, 
Mazzini  thanked  him  in  the  name  of  Italy,  in 
Spain  Espronceda  drew  his  inspiration  from 
him,  and  Castelar,  in  the  later  time,  eulo- 
gized him  for  his  liberating  influences  in  the 
peninsula  with  Spanish  amplitude  of  phrase. 
Karl   Elze   thinks   that   the   Russian   poet, 


376  BYRON'S  CENTENARY. 

Pushkin,  was  his  child ;  if  it  were  so,  Byron 
might  well  be  proud  of  what  such  an  in- 
fluence was  the  beginning  of  in  Russia. 
This  rapid  survey,  with  its  brilliant  names, 
impresses  the  mind  with  the  range  and 
dominance  of  this  man,  although  Landor's 
sneer,  when  he  hoped  that  "  the  mercies 
which  have  begun  with  man's  forgetfulness 
may  be  crowned  with  God's  forgiveness," 
does  not  now  seem  so  absurd  as  formerly. 

To  look  at  the  matter  from  this  point  of 
view,  however,  is  to  confuse  Byron  with  By- 
ronism.  There  was  a  European  mood,  a 
temperament  of  the  revolutionary  time,  that 
fed  on  Byron,  but  he  was  not  its  creator, 
and  to  regard  him  as  more  than  a  single  in- 
fluence of  many  that  moulded  the  young 
men  of  the  next  generation  is  to  give  him 
vastly  more  than  his  due.  This  is  the  se- 
cret of  his  vogue  in  Europe,  not  that  he 
liberated  their  minds,  but  that  he  set  the 
fashion  for  minds  expanding  in  a  new  age 
of  intellectual  pride  and  moral  irrespousi- 
bilit}^  helped  to  form  their  attitude,  and  was 
a  rallving  name  for  the  faction.  He  was 
licentious,  but  he  was  neither  democratical 
nor  atheistical ;  he  had  no  body  of  opinions 
properly  thought  out  and  correlated  with  so- 


BYEON'S  CENTENARY.  377 

cial  facts,  either  in  politics  or  religion  ;  he 
had  no  sti'ong  convictions  even ;  but,  with 
prejudices  of  rank  and  reminiscences  of 
Scottish  theology  from  which  he  could  not 
free  himself,  he  was  an  impulsive  and  there- 
fore uneven  revolter  from  the  old  regime, 
and  never  quite  at  home  in  the  new  camp. 
He  preferred,  he  said,  to  be  beheaded  by 
the  King  and  not  by  the  mob ;  and  the 
whole  aristocrat  spoke  in  the  saying.  Shel- 
ley wrote  of  him,  "  The  canker  of  aristoc- 
racy needs  to  be  cut  out ; "  and  he  hits  off 
Byron's  inconsequence  in  religion  where  he 
speaks  of  him  under  the  name  of  Maddalo, 
and  contrasts  him  with  himself.  Maddalo, 
he  says,  took  a  wicked  pleasure  In  drawing 
out  his  taunts  against  religion ;  but,  he  adds, 
"  What  Maddalo  thinks  on  these  matters  is 
not  exactly  known."  Byron  is  believed  to 
have  talked  with  Shelley  more  seriously 
than  with  any  other  man.  He  did  not  him- 
self know  what  he  thought ;  and  his  state 
of  mind  was  well  expressed  by  his  remark 
to  Lady  Byron,  "  The  trouble  is,  I  do  be- 
lieve." In  substance,  therefore,  unlike  Shel- 
ley, who  was  democratical  and  atheistical 
on  principle,  Byron  was  far  from  being  the 
ideal  of  the  various  "  young  "  nationalitie-s, 


378  BYEON'S  CENTENARY. 

France,  Germany,  Italy,  and  Spain,  in  the 
principal  tenets  dear  to  the  age.  It  was 
rather  his  personality,  and  what  they  trans- 
formed him  into  by  their  worship,  that  had 
power  over  them  in  their  search  for  "  lib- 
erty ; "  and  truly,  though  his  ideas  were  in- 
complete and  fragmentary,  and  inextricably 
blended,  even  in  their  formation,  with  his 
impulses  and  the  accidents  of  his  position 
as  a  pariah  of  genius,  yet  there  was  a  con- 
tagion in  his  spirit,  a  dash  of  energy  and  of 
abandon,  that  told  as  blood  tells  more  than 
thought. 

One  advantage,  too,  Byron  had  with  for- 
eign nations  that  with  his  own  counts  as  a 
defect.  He  had  no  form,  no  art,  no  finish ; 
and  the  poet  who  failed  in  these  things  can 
be  read  in  our  day  only  by  a  kind  of  suffer- 
ance, and  with  continual  friction  with  what 
has  come  to  be  our  mastering  literary  taste 
for  perfection  in  the  manner.  It  has  been 
said  that  he  consequently  bore  translation 
better  than  he  otherwise  would.  His  quality 
is  power,  not  charm ;  the  mood  and  the  situ- 
ation and  the  thought  are  the  elements  that 
count  in  his  poetry,  while  the  words  are  at 
the  best  eloquent  or  witty,  but  not  "  the  liv- 
ing garment  of  light."     The  result  was,  that 


BYEON'S  CENTENARY.  379 

he  could  be  given  almost  completely  in  a  for- 
eign language.  This  consideration  may  go 
far  to  explain  the  relative  estimate  of  him 
by  foreign  writers  in  comparison  with  other 
English  poets ;  for  these  others  who  have 
the  charm  that  cannot  be  transfused,  the  art 
that  will  obey  no  master  but  its  own  Pros- 
pero,  are  seen,  as  one  may  say,  without  their 
singing  robes  ;  and  their  poetry,  made  prose, 
loses  half  its  excellence.  This,  together  with 
the  German  element  in  one  portion  of  his 
work  and  the  strong  Italian  influence  in  a 
larger  portion,  especially  in  Don  Juan,  must 
be  taken  into  account  in  any  attempt  to  un- 
derstand why  he  was  the  best  known  English 
poet  on  the  Continent,  and  perhaps,  with  the 
exception  of  Shakespeare,  still  is. 

In  England,  Byron's  reputation  met  with 
rapid  decline  from  natural  causes.  It  is 
not  likely  that  his  misconduct  in  morals  was 
much  against  him,  and  Beaconsfield  was 
wholly  on  the  wrong  track  when  he  reminded 
the  Byron  meeting  that,  after  half  a  century, 
a  man's  private  life  scarcely  enters  into  the 
estimate  of  his  literary  genius.  It  seems 
rather  Byron's  lack  of  orthodoxy  that  Eng- 
land most  reseuted.  Society  put  up  with 
much  libertinism  in  those  days  in  high  quar- 


380  BYEOX'S  CENTENARY. 

ters  ;  but  Byron  had  attacked  the  faith,  or 
at  least  elements  of  it,  which  the  Church 
shared  in  common  with  Calvinism,  and  this 
was  too  shocking  a  matter  for  a  society 
which  found  hardly  more  than  matter  for 
gossip  in  natural  sons  and  daughters.  This 
was  the  reason  which  a  bishop  alleged  in 
the  House  of  Lords  in  answer  to  Brougham, 
in  the  debate  on  the  second  refusal  of  the 
Abbey.  Byron  had  attacked  Christianity, 
and  he  should  not  be  interred  "  in  the  Tem- 
ple of  our  God."  The  middle  classes  have 
always  rejected  Byron,  in  like  manner,  be- 
cause he  scoffed,  though,  no  doubt,  his  life 
and  the  licentious  portions  of  his  poetry  also 
offended  them.  From  the  first  his  skejati- 
cism  was  heavily  against  him,  and  probably 
it  still  remains  the  strongest  objection  to  his 
works  in  the  minds  of  Englishmen  gener- 
ally. In  Landor's  bitter  attack  (he  had  of- 
fended Landor  by  rhyming  his  name  with 
gander)  this  charge  is  made  the  climax,  and 
the  passage  is  brief  enough  to  quote  as  the 
best  word  of  Byron's  enemies :  — 

"  Afterwards,  whenever  he  wrote  a  bad 
poem,  he  supported  his  sinking  fame  by 
some  signal  act  of  profligacy :  an  elegy  by 
a  seduction,  a  heroic  by  an  adultery,  a  trag- 


BYEON'S  CENTENARY.  381 

edy  by  a  divorce.  On  the  remark  of  a 
learned  man  that  irregularity  is  no  indi- 
cation of  genius,  he  began  to  lose  ground 
rapidly,  when,  on  a  sudden,  he  cried  out  at 
the  Haymarket,  There  is  no  God.  It  was 
then  surmised  more  generally  and  more 
gravely  that  there  was  something  in  him, 
and  he  stood  upon  his  legs  almost  to  the 
last.  Say  what  you  will,  once  whispered 
a  friend  of  mine,  there  are  things  in  him 
strong  as  poison  and  original  as  sin."  This, 
with  all  its  excess,  is  no  inapt  character  of 
Byron,  as  English  prejudice  drew  him. 

On  the  other  hand,  much  that  was  in 
his  favor  at  first  was  necessarily  temporary. 
The  man  had  a  story.  He  was  one  of  the 
picturesque  characters  of  the  age,  and  while 
he  lived  he  was  interesting  to  his  time 
merely  for  his  personal  fortunes.  It  was 
to  his  gain,  too,  that  he  identified  his  own 
romance  with  that  which  he  early  invented, 
appealing  to  the  adventurous  in  men  and  to 
the  pity  and  admiration  of  women.  His  he- 
roes are  strong,  and  strength  succeeds  with 
the  sex  in  fiction  as  well  as  in  life  ;  and  they 
are,  besides,  usually  faithful  in  love,  while 
their  crimes  are  taken  out  of  the  moral  re« 
gion  of  deliberate  choice  by  a  kind  of  emo- 


382  BYRON'S  CENTENARY. 

tional  sophistry,  and  somehow  are  charged 
to  their  circumstances,  so  that  the  unwary 
and  innocent  reader  commiserates  their  vil- 
lainies instead  of  being  revolted  by  them. 
These  tales  (and  no  part  of  his  work  was 
more  popular)  are  hard  to  read  to-day,  but 
we  forget  too  readily  what  raw  and  bloody 
fiction  the  world  had  in  the  first  score  years 
of  this  century ;  we  cannot  conceive  how 
London  ran  after  stories  of  blighted  brig- 
ands and  sentimental  corsairs,  in  the  verv 
thunder  of  Waterloo.  But  so  it  was,  and 
Byron  was  more  interesting  in  that  he  was 
the  unhappy  and  noble  original  from  which 
the  pirates  of  his  imagination  were  drawn. 
If  he  changed  the  scene  and  wandered  over 
Europe  as  Childe  Harold,  he  gained  in  sen- 
timent ;  if  he  wore  the  mask  of  Manfred,  he 
gained  in  tragedy ;  and  if  he  sneered  in  Don 
Juan,  there  was  the  jaded  man  of  the  world, 
perhaps  more  interesting.  He  was,  more- 
over, a  peer;  but  a  dead  peer  certainly  is 
no  better  than  a  dead  lion,  and  when » he 
died,  why,  —  the  fashion  in  collars  changed. 
Other  living  personalities  occupied  the  stage ; 
England  gi^ew  steadily  more  sincere  in  re- 
ligion, more  strict  in  the  standard  of  pri- 
vate morals,  more  exacting  of  seriousness  in 


BYEON'S  CENTENARY.  383 

thought  and  o£  perfection  in  literary  form  ; 
and  all  these  influences  were  adverse  to 
Byron,  who  made  no  offsetting  gain  in  his 
own  counti-y  from  the  revolutionary  fervor 
that  helped  him  on  the  Continent. 

What  is  there  left  ?  Some  stirring  pas- 
sages of  adventure,  some  eloquent  descrip- 
tions of  nature,  some  personal  lyrics  of  true 
poetic  feeling,  dramas  which,  it  is  to  he 
hoped,  have  finally  damned  "  the  unities," 
and  one  great  poem  of  the  modern  spirit, 
Don  Juan.  And  what  remains  of  that  mel- 
odramatic Byron  of  women's  fancies  ?  His 
character  has  come  out  plain,  and  we  are 
really  amazed  at  it,  —  proud,  sensual,  self- 
ish, and,  it  must  be  added,  mean.  Ignoble 
he  was,  in  many  ways,  but,  for  all  that,  the 
energy  of  his  passions,  his  vitalit}^,  his  mas- 
terly egotism,  and  the  splendid  force  of  his 
genius,  made  him  a  commanding  name  and 
stamped  him  upon  the  succeeding  European 
time.  He  cannot  be  neglected  by  history, 
but  men  certainly  appear  to  pass  him  by. 
Arnold  has  endeavored  to  bring  him  back 
by  a  collection ;  but  Arnold's  critical  views 
on  poetry  seem  to  be  justifications  in  age  for 
the  tastes  he  had  when  he  was  young,  — 
reasons   after  the   act.     A  late   biographer 


38i  BYEON'S  CENTENARY. 

thinks  tliat  the  decadence  of  his  fame  is  due 
to  the  conservatism  of  the  last  half -cen- 
tury, and  that  in  the  revolutionary  age  that 
ought  soon  to  be  beginning,  he  will  retrieve 
himself.  But  can  this  be  hoped  of  a  "  revo- 
lutionary "  poet  whom  Swinburne  has  cast 
aside  ?  The  prediction  does  not  convince  us. 
Byronism  has  gone  by,  and  the  age  of  the 
"  enlightenment "  in  Germany  and  France ; 
such  a  mood  is  not  repeated.  Goethe  out- 
lived Wertherism,  but  had  Byron  such  good 
fortune?  In  his  own  character  there  are 
such  defects  as  forbid  admiration  in  the 
light  of  our  moral  ideas  ;  and  in  his  poems, 
taken  apart  from  their  time,  there  are  other 
defects,  both  in  their  substance,  and,  unques- 
tionably, in  their  form,  which  forbid  the  sort 
of  approval  that  would  make  them  in  a  true 
sense  classic,  as  a  whole,  though  the  quali- 
ties that  make  Childe  Harold  and  Don  Juan 
great,  and  preserve  here  and  there  passages 
in  other  j)oems,  are  those  that  confer  immor- 
tality. He  was  a  poet ;  he  was  a  force,  also, 
that  spent  itself  partly  in  creating  a  world- 
wide affectation,  and  partly  in  rousing  and 
reinforcing  the  impulse  of  individual  liberty 
on  the  Continent ;  but  he  is  a  poet  no  one 


hyron's  centenahy.  385 

can  love,  and  lie  left  a  memory  that  no 
one  can  admire,  and  there  is  none  of  his 
works  that  receives  the  meed  of  perfect 
praise. 


ON  BROWNING'S  DEATH. 

The  death  of  Browning  brings  one  stage 
nearer  the  too  plainly  ajjproaching  end  of 
a  literary  age  which  will  long  be  full  of  cu- 
rious interest  to  the  student  of  the  moods  of 
the  mind  of  man.    Time  has  linked  his  name 
with  that  of  Tennyson,  and  the  conjunction 
gives  to  England  another  of  those  double 
stars  of  genius  in  which  her  years  are  rich, 
and  by  which  the  spirit  of  an  age  has  a  two- 
fold   expression.     The    old    opposition,    the 
polarity  of   mind,   by  virtue  of  which   the 
Platonist  differs  from  the  Aristotelian,  the 
artist  from  the   thinker,  Shakespeare  from 
Jonson,   shows   its  efficacy  here,  too,  in  the 
last  modern  age,  and  divides  the  poets  and 
their  admirers  by  innate  preferences.     It  is 
needful  to  remember  this   contrast,  though 
not  to  insist  upon  it  unduly,  in  order  to  ap- 
proach the  work  of  Browning  rightly,  to  be 
just  to  those   who  idolize   him  without  of- 
fense to  those  who  are  repelled  by  him.    The 
analysis  of  his  powers,  the  charting  of  his 

386 


ON  BBOWNING'S  DEATH.  387 

life  and  work,  are  not  difficult ;  but  the 
value  of  his  real  achievement  is  more  uncer- 
tain. Interest  centres  entirely  in  his  poetry, 
for  his  career  has  been  without  notable  inci- 
dent, and  is  told  when  it  is  said  that  he  has 
lived  the  life  of  a  scholar  and  man  of  letters 
in  England  and  Italy  amid  the  social  cul- 
ture of  his  time.  For  the  world,  his  career 
is  the  succession  of  books  he  has  put  forth, 
and  this  is  as  he  would  have  it ;  publicity 
beyond  this  he  did  not  seek,  but  refused 
with  violence  and  acrimony. 

In  his  earliest  poem,  youthful  in  its  self- 
portraiture,  its  literary  touch,  and  its  fragmen- 
tary plan,  the  one  striking  quality  is  the  flow 
of  language.  Here  was  a  writer  who  would 
never  lack  for  words  ;  fluent,  as  if  inexhaus- 
tible, the  merely  verbal  element  in  Pauline 
shows  no  struggle  with  the  medium  of  the 
poet's  art.  This  gift  of  facility  was,  as  is 
usual,  first  to  show  itself.  In  Paracelsus 
the  second  primary  quality  of  Browning  was 
equally  conspicuous,  —  the  power  of  reason- 
ing in  verse.  These  two  traits  have  for  a 
poet  as  much  weakness  as  strength,  and  they 
lie  at  the  source  of  Browning's  defects  as 
a  master  of  poetic  art.  His  facility  allowed 
him  to  be  diffuse  in  language,  and  his  rea- 


388  ON  BROWNING'S  DEATH. 

sonino'  habit  led  him  often  to  be  diffuse  in 
matter.      In    Sordello   the  two  produced  a 
monstrosity,   both    in   construction    and   ex- 
pression,   not   to    be    rivaled    in    literature. 
Picturesque  detail,  intellectual  interest,  moral 
meaning,  struggle  in  vain  in  that   tale    to 
make  themselves  felt  and  discerned  through 
the  tangle  of  words  and  the  labyrinth  of  act 
and  reflection.     But  already  in  these  poems 
Browning  had  shown,  to  himself,  if  not  to 
the  world,  that  he  had  come  to  certain  con- 
clusions, to  a  conception  of  human  life  and 
a  decision  as  to  the  use  of  his  art  in  regard 
to  it,  which  were  to  give  him   substantial 
power.     He  defined  it  by  his  absorption  in 
Paracelsus  with  the  broad  ideas  of  infinite 
power  and  infinite    love,  which  in  his   last 
poem  still  maintain  their  place  in  his   sys- 
tem  as  the  highest  solvents  of  experience 
and  speculation  ;  and  in  Sordello  he  stated 
the  end  of  art,  which  he  continued  to  seek, 
in  his  maxim  that  little  else  is  worth  study 
except  the  "  history  of  a  soul."     His  entire 
poetic  work,  broadly  speaking,  is  the  illus- 
tration of  this  short  sentence.     Such  prepos- 
sessions with  the  spiritual  meaning  of  life 
as  these  poems  show  made  sure  the  predom- 
inance in  his  work  of  the  higher  interests  of 


ON  BROWNING'S  DEATH.  389 

man ;  and  he  won  his  audience  finally  by 
this  fact,  that  he  had  something  to  say  that 
was  ethical  and  religious.  The  develop- 
ment, however,  of  both  the  theory  and  prac- 
tice of  his  mind  had  to  be  realized  in  far 
more  definite  and  striking  forms  than  the 
earlier  poems  before  the  attention  of  the 
world  could  be  secured. 

It  would  seem  natural  that  a  man  with 
such  convictions  as  Browning  acknowledged, 
should  be  preeminently  an  idealist,  and  that 
his  point  of  weakness  should  prove  to  be  the 
tendency  to  metaphysical  and  vague  matter 
not  easily  putting  on  poetical  form.  But  he 
was,  in  fact,  a  realist,  —  one  who  is  primarily 
concerned  with  things,  and  uses  the  method 
of  observation.  His  sense  for  actual  fact  is 
always  keen.  In  that  poem  of  Paracelsus, 
which  is  a  discussion  in  the  air  if  ever 
a  poem  was,  it  is  significant  to  find  him 
emphasizing  the  circumstance  that  he  had 
taken  very  few  liberties  with  his  subject, 
and  bringing  books  to  show  evidence  of  his- 
torical fidelity.  But,  little  of  the  dramatic 
spirit  as  there  is  in  Paracelsus,  there  was 
much  in  Browning  when  it  should  come  to 
be  released,  and  it  belongs  to  the  dramatist 
to  be  interested  in  the  facts  of  life,  the  flesh 


390  ON  BROWNING'S  DEATH. 

and  blood  reality,  in  which  he  may  or  may 
not  (according  to  his  greatness)  find  a  soul. 
Browning  was  thus  a  realist,  and  he  chose 
habitually  the  objective  method  of  art  —  but 
to  set  forth  "  the  history  of  a  soul."  Had 
he  been  an  idealist,  his  subject  would  have 
been  "  the  history  of  the  soul ;  "  his  method 
mififht  or  misht  not  have  been  different. 
This  change  of  the  particle  is  a  slight  one, 
but  it  involves  that  polarity  of  mind  which 
sets  Browning  opposite  to  Tennyson.  He 
deals  with  individuals,  takes  in  imagination 
their  point  of  view,  assumes  for  the  time  be- 
ing their  circumstances  and  emotions ;  and 
one  who  does  this  in  our  time,  with  a  pre- 
occupation with  the  soul  in  the  individual, 
cannot  escape  from  one  overpowering  im- 
pression, repeated  from  every  side  of  the 
modern  age,  —  the  impression,  namely,  of 
the  relativity  of  human  life. 

This  is  the  lesson  which  is  spread  over 
Browning's  pages,  with  line  on  line  and  pre- 
cept on  precept.  By  it  he  comes  into  har- 
mony with  the  very  spirit  of  the  century  on 
its  intellectual  side,  and  represents  it.  The 
"  history  of  a  soul  "  differs  very  greatly  ac- 
cording to  circumstance,  native  impulses,  the 
needs  of  life  at  different  stages  of  growth, 


ON  BROWNING'S  DEATH.  391 

the  balance  of  faculties  and  desires  in  it,  the 
temperament  of  its  historical  period,  the 
access  to  it  of  art  or  music  or  thought,  and 
in  a  thousand  ways ;  and  Browning  devotes 
himself  oftentimes  to  the  exposition  of  all 
this  web  of  circumstance,  in  order  that  we 
may  see  the  soul  as  it  was  under  its  con- 
ditions, instead  of  leaping  to  a  conclusion 
by  a  hard-and-fast  morality  based  upon  the 
similarity  of  the  soul  in  all  men.  The  task 
happily  falls  in  with  his  fine  gift  of  reason- 
ing, and  increases  by  practice  the  supple- 
ness and  subtlety  of  this  faculty  of  his.  One 
might  say,  indeed,  without  close  computa- 
tion, that  the  larger  part  of  his  entire  poetic 
work  is  occupied  with  such  reasoning  upon 
psychological  cases,  in  the  manner  of  a  law- 
yer who  educes  a  client's  justification  from 
the  details  of  his  temptation.  Many  of  the 
longer  poems  are  only  instances  of  special 
pleading,  and  have  all  the  faults  that  belong 
to  that  form  of  thought.  The  Ring  and  the 
Book  is  such  an  interminable  argument,  mar- 
velous for  intellectual  resource,  for  skill  in 
dialectic,  for  plausibility.  Bishop  Blougram, 
Mr.  Sludge,  Prince  Hohenstiel-Schwangau, 
and  others,  readily  occur  to  mind  as  being 
in  the  same  way  "  apologies  ;  "  and  in  these 


392  ON  BROWNING'S  DEATH. 

one  feels  that,  while  It  is  well  to  know  what 
the  prisoner  urges  on  his  own  behalf,  it  is 
the  shabby,  the  cowardly,  the  criminal,  the 
base,  the  detestable,  that  is  masking  under 
a  too  well  -  woven  cloak  of  words,  and  that 
the  special  pleader  is  pursuing  his  game  at 
the  risk  of  a  higher  honesty  than  consists 
in  the  mere  understanding  of  the  mechan- 
ism of  motive  and  act.  Yet  this  catholicity, 
which  seems  to  have  for  its  motto,  "  Who 
understands  all,  forgives  all,"  is  a  natural 
consequence  in  a  mind  so  impressed  with 
the  doctrine  of  the  relativity  of  human  life 
as  was  Browning's.  The  tendency  of  the 
doctrine  is  to  efface  moral  judgment,  and  to 
substitute  for  it  intellectual  comprehension  ; 
and  usually  this  results  in  a  practical  fa- 
talism, acquiesced  in  if  not  actively  held. 
Here,  too,  Browning's  mental  temperament 
has  another  point  of  contact  with  the  gen- 
eral spirit  of  the  age,  and  allows  him  to 
take  up  into  his  genius  the  humanitarian 
instinct  so  powerful  in  his  contemporaries. 
For  the  perception  of  the  excuses  for  men's 
action  in  those  of  low  or  morbid  or  deformed 
development  liberalizes  the  mind,  and  the 
finding  of  the  spark  of  soul  in  such  indi- 
viduals does  mean  to  the  Christian  the  find- 


ON  BROWNING'S  DEATH.  393 

ing  of  that  immortal  part  which  equalizes  all 
in  an  equal  destiny,  however  the  ditferenee 
may  look  between  men  while  the  process 
of  life  is  going  on.  Browning  came  very 
early  to  this  conviction,  that  in  all  men, 
however  weak  or  grossly  set  this  spark  may 
he,  it  is  to  be  sought  for.  In  this  he  is 
consistently  philanthropic  and  democratic, 
Christian  in  spirit  and  practice,  comprehen- 
sive in  tolerance,  large  in  charity,  intellec- 
tually (but  not  emotionally)  sympathetic. 
It  is  perhaps  unnecessary  to  add  that  his 
love  of  righteousness  is  not  so  striking  a 
trait. 

But  what  in  all  this  view  of  life  is  most 
original  in  Browning  is  something  that  pos- 
sibly perplexes  even  his  devoted  admirers. 
Life,  he  says,  no  matter  what  it  may  be  in  " 
its  accidents  of  time,  or  place,  or  action,  is 
the  stuff  to  make  the  soul  of.  In  the  hum- 
blest as  the  noblest,  in  Caliban  as  in  Pros- 
pero,  the  life  vouchsafed  is  the  means  (ade- 
quate, he  seems  to  say,  in  all  cases)  of  which 
the  soul  makes  use  to  grow  in.  He  thus 
avoids  the  deadening  conclusions  to  which 
his  doctrine  of  relativity  might  lead,  by  as- 
serting the  equal  and  identical  opportunity 
in  all  to  develop  the  soul.     He  unites  with 


394  ON  BROWNING'S  DEATH. 

this  the  original  theory  —  at  least  one  that 
he  has  made  his  own  —  that  whatever  the 
soul  seeks  it  should  seek  with  all  its  might ; 
and,  pushing  to  the  extreme,  he  urges  that 
if  a  man  sin,  let  him  sin  to  the  uttermost  of 
his  desire.  This  is  the  moral  of  the  typical 
poem  of  this  class,  The  Statue  and  the  Bust, 
and  he  means  more  by  this  than  that  the 
intention,  sinning  in  thought,  is  equivalent 
to  sinning  in  act,  —  he  means  that  a  man 
should  have  his  will.  No  doubt  this  is 
directly  in  accord  with  the  great  value  he 
places  on  strength  of  character,  vitality  in 
life,  on  resolution,  courage,  and  the  braving 
of  consequences.  But  the  ignoring  of  the 
immense  value  of  restraint  as  an  element  in 
character  is  complete ;  and  in  the  case  of 
many  whose  choice  is  slowly  and  doubtfully 
made  in  those  younger  years  when  the  desire 
for  life  in  its  fullness  of  experience  is  strong- 
est, and  the  wisdom  of  knowledge  of  life  in 
its  effects  is  weakest,  the  advice  to  obey  im- 
pulse at  all  costs,  to  throw  doubt  and  au- 
thority to  the  winds,  and  "  live  my  life  and 
have  my  day,"  is  of  dubious  utility.  Over 
and  over  again  in  Browning's  poetry  one 
meets  with  this  insistence  on  the  value  of 
moments  of  high  excitement,  of  intense  liv- 


ON  BROWNING'S  DEATH.  395 

ing,  of  full  experience  of  pleasure,  even 
though  such  moments  be  of  the  essence  of 
evil  and  fruitful  in  all  dark  consequences. 
It  is  probable  that  a  deep  optimism  under- 
lies all  this  ;  that  Browning  believed  that 
the  soul  does  not  perish  in  its  wrong-doing, 
but  that  through  this  experience,  too,  as 
through  good,  it  develops  finally  its  im- 
mortal nature,  and  that,  as  in  his  view  the 
life  of  the  soul  is  in  its  energy  of  action,  the 
man  must  act  even  evil  if  he  is  to  grow 
at  all.  Optimism,  certainly,  of  the  most 
thorough-going  kind  this  is  ;  but  Browning 
is  so  consistent  an  optimist  in  other  parts  of 
his  philosophy  that  this  defense  may  be 
made  for  him  on  a  i^oint  where  the  common 
thought  and  deepest  conviction  of  the  race, 
in  its  noblest  thinkers  and  purest  artists,  are 
opposed  to  him,  refusing  to  believe  that  the 
doing  of  evil  is  to  be  urged  in  the  interest 
of  true  manliness. 

The  discussion  of  Browning's  attitude  to- 
wards life  in  the  actual  world  of  men  has 
led  away  from  the  direct  consideration  of 
the  work  in  which  he  embodied  his  convic- 
tions. The  important  portion  of  it  came  in 
middle  life,  when  he  obtained  mastery  of  the 
form  of  poetic  art  known  as  the  dramatic 


396  ON  BROWNING'S  DEATH. 

monologue.  A  realist,  i£  he  be  a  poet,  must 
resort  to  the  drama.  It  was  inevitable  in 
Browning's  ease.  Yet  the  drama,  as  a  form, 
offered  as  much  unfitness  for  Browning's 
genius  as  it  did  fitness.  The  drama  requires 
energy,  it  is  true,  and  interest  in  men  as  in- 
dividuals ;  and  these  Browning  had.  It  also 
requires  concentration,  economy  of  material, 
and  constructive  power  ;  and  these  were  dif- 
ficult to  Browning.  He  did  not  succeed  in 
his  attempts  to  write  drama  in  its  perfect 
form.  He  could  make  fragments  of  intense 
power  in  passion  ;  he  could  reveal  a  single 
character  at  one  critical  moment  of  its  ca- 
reer ;  he  could  sum  up  a  life  history  in  a 
long  soliloquy  ;  but  he  could  not  do  more 
than  this  and  keep  the  same  level  of  per- 
formance. Why  he  failed  is  a  curious  ques- 
tion, and  will  doubtless  be  critically  debated 
with  a  plentiful  lack  of  results.  His  growth 
in  dramatic  faculty,  in  apprehension  of  the 
salient  points  of  character  and  grasp  in  pre- 
senting them,  in  perception  of  the  valjue  of 
situation  and  power  to  use  it  to  the  full,  can 
readily  be  traced ;  but  there  comes  a  point 
where  the  growth  stops.  Superior  as  his 
mature  work  is  to  that  of  his  youth  in  all 
these  qualities,  it  falls  short  of  that  perfect 


ON  BROWNING'S  DEATH.  397 

and  complex  design  and  that  informing  life 
which  mark  the  developed  dramatist.  In 
the  monologues  he  deals  with  incidents  in 
a  life,  with  moods  of  a  personality,  with  the 
consciousness  which  a  man  has  of  his  own 
character  at  the  end  of  his  career ;  but  he 
seizes  these  singly,  and  at  one  moment.  His 
characters  do  not  develop  before  the  eye ; 
he  does  not  catch  the  soul  in  the  very  act ; 
he  does  not  present  life  so  much  as  the  re- 
sults of  life.  He  frequently  works  by  the 
method  of  retrospect,  he  tells  the  story,  but 
does  not  enact  it.  In  all  these  he  displays 
the  governing  motive  of  his  art,  which  is  to 
reveal  the  soul ;  but  if  the  soul  reveals  itself 
in  his  verses,  it  is  commonly  by  confession, 
not  presentation.  He  has,  in  fact,  that 
malady  of  thovxght  which  interferes  with  the 
dramatist's  control  of  his  hand  ;  he  is  think- 
ing abovt  his  characters,  and  only  indirectly 
in  them,  and  he  is  most  anxious  to  convey 
his  reflections  upon  the  psychical  phenom- 
enon which  he  is  attending  to.  In  other 
words,  he  is,  primarily,  a  moralist ;  he  rea- 
sons, and  he  is  fluent  in  words  and  fertile  in 
thoughts,  and  so  he  loses  the  object  itself, 
becomes  indirect,  full  of  afterthought  and 
parenthesis,  and  im])airs  the  dramatic  effect. 


398  ON  BEOWNING'S  DEATH. 

These  traits  may  be  observed,  in  different 
degrees,  in  many  of  the  poems,  even  in  the 
best.  In  the  dramas  themselves  the  lack  of 
constructive  power  is  absolute.  Pippa  Passes 
is  only  a  succession  of  dramatic  fragments 
artificially  bound  together,  and  in  the  others 
the  lack  of  body  and  interdependent  life  be- 
tween the  parts  is  patent  to  all.  In  a  Bal- 
cony, certainly  one  of  his  finest  wrought 
poems,  is  only  an  incident.  He  is  at  his 
best  when  his  field  is  most  narrow  —  in  such 
a  poem  as  The  Laboratory. 

There  is  a  compensation  for  these  defi- 
ciencies of  power  in  that  the  preference  of 
his  mind  for  a  single  passion  or  mood  or 
crisis  at  its  main  moment  opens  to  him  the 
plain  and  unobstructed  way  to  lyrical  ex- 
pression. His  dramatic  feeling  of  the  pas- 
sion and  the  situation  supplies  an  intensity 
which  finds  its  natural  course  in  lyrical  ex- 
altation. It  may  well  be  thought,  if  it  were 
deemed  necessary  to  decide  upon  the  best 
in  Browning's  work,  that  his  genius  is  most 
nobly  manifest  in  those  lyrics  and  romances 
which  he  called  dramatic.  The  scale  rises 
from  his  argumentative  and  moralizing  verse, 
however  employed,  through  those  monologues 
which  obey  the  necessity  for  greater  concen- 


ON  BBOWNING'S  DEATH.  399 

tration  as  the  dramatic  element  enters  into 
them,  up  to  those  most  powerful  and  direct 
poems  in  which  the  intensity  of  feeling  en- 
forces a  lyrical  movement  and  lift ;  and 
akin  to  these  last  are  the  songs  of  love  or  he- 
roism into  which  the  dramatic  element  does 
not  enter.  Indeed,  Browning's  lyrical  gift 
was  more  perfect  than  his  dramatic  gift ; 
he  knew  the  secret  of  a  music  which  has 
witchery  in  it  independent  of  what  the  words 
may  say,  and  when  his  hand  fell  on  that 
chord,  he  mastered  the  heart  with  real  poetic 
charm.  It  was  seldom,  however,  that  this 
happy  moment  came  to  him,  ennobling  his 
language  and  giving  wing  to  his  emotion ; 
and,  such  poems  being  rare,  it  remains  true 
that  the  best  of  his  work  is  to  be  sought  in 
those  pieces,  comprehending  more  of  life, 
where  his  dramatic  power  takes  on  a  lyrical 
measure.  Such  work  became  more  infre- 
quent as  years  went  on,  and  he  declined 
again  into  that  earlier  style  of  wordy  ratioci- 
nation, of  tedious  pleading  as  of  a  lawsuit, 
of  mere  intellectuality  as  of  the  old  hair- 
splitting schoolmen,  though  he  retained  the 
strength  and  definiteness  of  mind  which  mere 
growth  had  brought  to  him,  and  he  occasion- 
ally produced  a  poem  which  was  only  less 


400  ON  BROWNING'S  DEATH. 

good  than  the  best  of  his  middle  age.  The 
translations  from  the  Greek  with  which  he 
employed  his  age  stand  in  a  different  class 
from  his  original  poems,  and  were  a  fortunate 
resort  for  his  vigorous  but  now  feebly  crea- 
tive mind.  At  the  end  he  still  applied  him- 
self to  the  interpretation  of  individual  lives, 
but  in  choosing  them  he  was  attracted  even 
more  uniformly  by  something  exceptional, 
often  grotesque,  in  them,  and  hence  they  are 
more  curious  and  less  instructive  than  the 
earlier  work  of  the  same  kind. 

The  mass  of  Browning's  writings  which 
has  been  glanced  at  as  the  expression  of  the 
reasoning,  the  dramatic,  or  the  lyrical  im- 
pulse in  his  genius  has  attracted  attention 
as  wide  as  the  English  language,  and  it  has 
been  intimated  that  this  success  has  been 
won  in  some  degree  on  other  than  poetic 
grounds.  It  is  fair  to  say,  in  view  of  the 
facts,  that  many  who  have  felt  his  appeal  to 
them  have  found  a  teacher  rather  than  a 
poet.  Two  points  in  which  he  reflects  his 
age  have  been  mentioned,  but  there  is  a 
third  point  which  has  perhaps  been  more 
efficacious  than  his  sense  of  the  relati\aty  of 
human  life  or  his  conviction  of  the  worth  of 
every  human  soul :  he  adds  to  these  cardinal 


ON  BROWNING'S  DEATH.  401 

doctrines  a  firm  and  loudly  asseverated  re- 
ligious belief.  It  is  the  more  noteworthy 
because  his  reasoning  faculty  might  in  his 
time  have  led  him  almost  anywhere  rather 
than  to  the  supreme  validity  of  truth  arrived 
at  by  intuition.  This  makes  his  character 
the  more  interesting,  for  the  rationalizing 
mind  which  submits  itself  to  intuitive  faith 
exactly  parallels  in  Browning  the  realist 
with  a  predominating  interest  in  the  soul. 
There  is  no  true  contradiction  in  this,  no  in- 
consistency ;  but  the  combination  is  unusual. 
It  is  natural  that,  in  a  time  of  decreasing 
authority  in  formal  religion,  a  poet  in  Brown- 
ing's position  should  wield  an  immense  at- 
traction, and  owe  something,  as  Carljde  did, 
to  the  wish  of  his  audience  to  be  reassured 
in  their  religious  faith.  Browning  had  be- 
gun with  that  resolution  of  the  universe  into 
infinite  power  and  infinite  love  of  which 
something  has  already  been  said,  and  he 
continued  to  teach  that  through  nature  we 
arrive  at  the  conception  of  omnipotence,  and 
through  the  soul  at  the  conception  of  love, 
and  he  apparently  finds  the  act  of  faith  in 
the  belief  that  infinite  power  will  finally  be 
discerned  as  the  instrument  and  expression 
of  infinite  love.    This  is  pure  optimism  ;  and 


402  ON  BEOWNING'S  DEATH. 

in  accordance  with  it  he  preaches  his  gospel, 
which  is  that  each  soul  should  grow  to  its 
utmost  in  power  and  in  love,  and  in  the  face 
of  difficulties  —  of  mysteries  in  experience 
or  thought  —  should  repose  with  entire  trust 
on  the  doctrine  that  God  has  ordered  life 
beneficently,  and  that  we  who  live  should 
wait  with  patience,  even  in  the  wreck  of  our 
own  or  others'  lives,  for  the  disclosure  here- 
after which  shall  reconcile  to  our  eyes  and 
hearts  the  jar  with  justice  and  goodness  of 
all  that  has  gone  before.  This  is  a  system 
simple  enough  and  complete  enough  to  live 
by,  if  it  be  truly  accepted.  It  is  probable, 
however,  that  Browning  wins  less  by  these 
doctrines,  which  .are  old  and  commonplace, 
than  by  the  vigor  with  which  he  dogmatizes 
upon  them ;  the  certainty  with  which  he 
speaks  of  such  high  matters ;  the  fervor,  and 
sometimes  the  eloquence,  with  which,  touch- 
ing on  the  deepest  and  most  secret  chords  of 
the  heart's  desire,  he  strikes  out  the  notes  of 
courage,  of  hope  and  vision,  and  of  the  fore- 
tasted triumph.  The  energy  of  his  own  faith 
carries  others  along  with  it ;  the  manliness 
of  his  own  soul  infects  others  with  its  cheer 
r.ud  its  delight  in  the  struggle  of  spiritual 
life  on  earth  :  and  all  this  the  more  because 


ON  BROWNING'S  DEATH.  403 

he  is  learned  in  the  wisdom  of  the  Rabbis, 
is  conversant  with  modern  life  and  know- 
ledge in  all  its  range,  is  gifted  with  intel- 
lectual genius,  and  yet  displays  a  faith  the 
more  robust  because  it  is  not  cloistered,  the 
more  credible  because  it  is  not  professional. 
The  character  of  Browning's  genius,  his 
individual  traits,  the  general  substance  of 
his  thought,  do  not  admit  of  material  mis- 
conception. It  is  when  the  question  is  raised 
upon  the  permanent  value  of  his  work  that 
the  opportunity  for  wide  divergence  arises. 
That  there  are  dreary  wastes  in  it  cannot  be 
gainsaid.  Much  is  now  unreadable  that 
was  excused  in  a  contemporary  book  ;  much 
never  was  readable  at  all ;  and  of  the  re- 
mainder how  much  will  the  next  age  in  its 
turn  cast  aside  ?  Its  serious  claim  to  our 
attention  on  ethical,  religious,  or  intellectual 
grounds  may  be  admitted,  without  pledging 
the  twentieth  century,  which  will  have  its 
own  special  phases  of  thought,  and  thinkers 
to  illustrate  them.  Browning  must  live,  as 
the  other  immortals  do,  by  the  poetry  in 
him.  It  is  true  he  has  enlarged  the  field  of 
poetry  by  annexing  the  experience  that  be- 
longs to  the  artist  and  the  musician,  and  has 
made  some  of  his  finest  and  most  original 


404  ON  BROWNING'S  DEATH. 

poems  out  of  such  motives  ;  and  his  wide 
knowledge  has  served  him  in  other  ways, 
though  it  has  stiffened  many  a  page  with 
pedantry  and  antiquarianism.  It  is  true 
that  there  is  a  grotesque  quality  in  some  of 
his  work,  but  his  humor  in  this  kind  is  really 
a  pretense  ;  no  one  laughs  at  it ;  it  arouses 
only  an  amazed  wonder,  like  the  stone  masks 
of  some  medieval  church.  In  all  that  he 
derived  from  learning  and  scholarship  there 
is  the  alloy  of  mortality ;  in  all  his  moraliz- 
ing and  special  pleading  and  superfine  rea- 
soning there  enters  the  chance  that  the  world 
may  lose  interest  in  his  treatment  of  the 
subject ;  in  all,  except  where  he  sings  from 
the  heart  itself  or  pictures  life  directly  and 
without  comment  save  of  the  briefest,  there 
is  some  opportunity  for  time  to  breed  decay. 
The  faith  he  preached  was  the  poetical  com- 
plement of  Carlyle's  prose,  and  proceeded 
from  much  the  same  grounds  and  by  the 
same  steps :  believe  in  God,  and  act  like  a 
man  —  that  was  the  substance  of  it.  But 
Carlyle  himself  already  grows  old  and  harsh. 
The  class  of  mind  to  which  Browning  be- 
longs depends  on  its  matter  for  its  life  ;  un- 
less he  has  transformed  it  into  poetry,  time 
will  deal  hardly  with  it. 


ON  BROyVNING'S  DEATH.  405 

To  come  to  the  question  which  cannot  be 
honestly  set  aside,  although  it  is  no  longer 
profitable  to  discuss  it,  Browning  has  not 
cared  for  that  poetic  form  which  bestows 
perennial  charm,  or  else  he  was  incapable  of 
it.  He  fails  in  beauty,  in  concentration  of 
interest,  in  economy  of  language,  in  selec- 
tion of  the  best  from  the  common  treasure 
of  experience.  In  those  works  where  he  has 
been  most  indifferent,  as  in  the  Red  Cotton 
Night -Cap  Country,  he  has  been  merely 
whimsical  and  dull ;  in  those  works  where 
the  genius  he  possessed  is  most  felt,  as  in 
Saul,  A  Toccata  of  Galuppi's,  Rabbi  Ben 
Ezra,  The  Flight  of  the  Duchess,  The 
Bishop  Orders  his  Tomb  in  St.  Praxed's 
Church,  Herve  Kiel,  Cavalier  Tunes,  Time's 
Revenges,  and  many  more,  he  achieves 
beauty  or  nobility  or  fitness  of  phrase  such 
as  only  a  poet  is  capable  of.  It  is  in  these 
last  pieces  and  their  like  that  his  fame  lies 
for  the  future.  It  was  his  lot  to  be  strong 
as  the  thinker,  the  moralist  with  "  the  ac- 
complishment of  verse,"  the  scholar  inter- 
ested to  rebuild  the  past  of  experience,  the 
teacher  with  an  explicit  dogma  to  enforce 
in  an  intellectual  form  with  examples  from 
life,  the  anatomist  of  human   passions,  in- 


406  ON  BROWNING'S  DEATH. 

stincts,  and  impulses  in  all  their  gamut,  tlie 
commentator  on  his  own  age ;  he  was  weak 
as  the  artist,  and  indulged,  often  unneces- 
sarily and  by  choice,  in  the  repulsive  form 
—  in  the  awkward,  the  obscure,  the  ugly. 
He  belongs  with  Jonson,  with  Dryden,  with 
the  heirs  of  the  masculine  intellect,  the  men 
of  power  not  unvisited  by  grace,  but  in 
whom  mind  is  predominant.  Upon  the 
work  of  such  poets  time  hesitates,  conscious 
of  their  mental  greatness,  but  also  of  their 
imperfect  art,  their  heterogeneous  matter; 
at  last  the  good  is  sifted  from  that  whence 
worth  has  departed. 


SHELLEY'S   WORK. 

The  centenary  of  Shelley's  birth  will 
be  duly  observed  with  public  ceremonies 
in  England  and  Italy  —  the  land  that  bore 
him  and  drove  him  forth,  and  the  land  tliat 
sheltered  him  and  now  guards  his  grave, 
both  equally  his  home  in  the  eyes  of  the 
world ;  but  in  the  private  thoughts  of  many 
single  lives  the  day  of  his  birth  will  be 
silently  remembered  with  tenderness,  with 
gratitude,  and  with  a  renewal  of  faith  in 
the  things  in  which  he  believed.  Personal 
devotion  must  naturally  enter  into  these 
feelings,  for  such  days  are  to  commemorate 
a  life,  and  they  bring  the  man  back  with 
peculiar  power.  To  win  unknown  friends, 
age  after  age,  is  a  privilege  of  the  poet;  it 
is  his  reward  —  the  greater  because  it  can 
touch  him  no  more  —  for  the  open  trust  in 
mankind  with  which  he  confides,  to  who- 
soever will,  the  secret  things  of  his  spirit. 
Yet,  to  make  a  poet's  personality  the  main 
element  in  his  memory,  if  he  be  really 
great,  confines  his  fame  too  narrowly.    At- 

407 


408  SHELLEY'S   WORK. 

tractive  as  Shelley  was,  his  worth  did  not 
lie  wholly  in  his  charm.  Interest  in  his 
life  may  become  degraded  into  ignoble 
curiosity,  and,  in  time's  balance,  love's 
gift  is  less  weighty  than  reason's  award. 
Recognition  of  noble  human  traits  is  an 
important  part  of  justice  done  to  the  dead ; 
but  it  is  not  thus  that  Shelley  would  wish 
to  be  judged.  Chaucer's  question,  "How 
shall  the  world  be  served?"  was  the  alpha 
and  omega  of  his  life.  It  inspired  his 
youthful  prose;  as  his  faculties  grew  and 
the  poet  emerged  from  the  thinker,  it  gov- 
erned the  most  intense  expression  of  his 
soul  in  manhood;  it  absorbed  him,  as  he 
himself  said,  with  that  passion  for  reform- 
ing the  world  which  was  elemental  in  his 
genius.  It  is  true  that  the  artistic  and 
the  practical  instincts  in  him  worked 
together  imperfectly,  and  that  at  times  of 
despair  he  fell  back  upon  himself,  pure 
poet,  pouring  his  heart  out  in  lyrical  effu- 
sion, with  cadences  of  pain  that  fill  dur 
eyes  with  tears.  But  he  took  heart  again, 
and  returned,  though  always  more  wearied, 
to  the  large  interests  of  the  race.  He  be- 
lieved that  man  is  the  poet's  muse ;  at  the 
height  of  his  aspiration,  singing  with  the 


SHELLEY'S   WORK.  409 

skylark,  he  still  remembered  that  the  poet's 
"  unbidden  hymns  "  are  the  means  by  which 
the  world  shall  be  wrought  to  sympathies 
with  unheeded  hopes  and  fears;  in  the 
depth  of  his  dejection  he  still  prayed  that 
the  wind  might  blow  abroad  the  poet's 
words,  "as  from  an  unextinguished  hearth 
ashes  and  sparks,"  to  be  an  enkindling 
prophecy  thi'oughout  the  world  —  "my 
words  among  mankind."  What  he  be- 
lieved true  poets  are  he  told  in  a  familiar 
passage  of  his  prose  —  "  the  hierophants  of 
an  unapprehended  inspiration;  the  mirrors 
of  the  gigantic  shadows  which  futurity 
casts  upon  the  present;  the  words  which 
express  what  they  understand  not;  the 
trumpets  that  sing  to  battle  and  feel  not 
what  they  inspire;  the  influence  which  is 
moved  not,  but  moves." 

One  hundred  years  have  passed  since  he 
was  born,  and  two  generations  have  been 
buried  since  his  ashes  were  laid  by  the 
Roman  wall.  It  is  reasonable  to  ask 
whether  he  had  any  share  in  this  prophetic 
power,  brooding  on  things  to  come,  which 
is  the  mystical  endowment  of  poetic 
genius ;  whether  he  anticipated  time  in 
those  far  thoughts  forecasting  hope,  which 


410  SHELLEY'S   WORK. 

he  declared  to  be  the  substance  of  poetic 
intuition ;  whether  he  be  one  of  those  who, 
in  his  own  phrase,  rule  our  spirits  from 
their  urns,  with  power  still  vital  in  the 
chaotic  thought  and  striving  of  mankind. 
"Poets,"  he  said,  concluding  the  impas- 
sioned words  just  quoted,  "are  the  unac- 
knowledged legislators  of  the  world."  If 
the  phrase  seems  the  mere  enthusiasm  of 
eloquence,  yet  so  opposite  a  mind  as  John- 
son's ratifies  it.  " He,"  said  the  old  doctor 
concerning  the  poet,  "must  write  as  the 
interpreter  of  nature  and  the  legislator  of 
mankind,  and  consider  himself  as  presiding 
over  the  thoughts  and  manners  of  future 
generations."  To  leave,  then,  Shelley's 
charm,  his  character,  and  all  his  private 
life,  which  the  world  well  knows ;  to  leave 
analysis  and  criticism,  since  any  occasion 
will  serve  for  such  examination  of  the  pro- 
priety of  his  moral  method  in  poetry,  and 
its  beneficial  or  injurious  effects  upon  his 
work,  of  the  truth  of  his  imagination  and 
of  its  nearness  or  remoteness  in  human  in- 
terest and  reality,  of  his  art,  the  speed  and 
exaltation  of  his  luminous  eloquence,  the 
piercing  tone  of  his  lyrical  song  —  to  leave 
such  matters,  I  say,  of  merely  personal  or 


SHELLEY'S   WORK.  411 

literary  concern,  wliat  has  the  century- 
past  disclosed  in  regard  to  Shelley's  sym- 
pathies with  the  next  ages,  and  the  vitality 
of  his  energy  in  the  forces  that  advance 
mankind?  The  influences  that  blend  in 
progress  are  many  and  various ;  the  fore- 
knowledge of  the  most  clear-sighted  is 
vague  and  doubtful,  and  the  wisest  con- 
tributes only  his  portion  to  the  great  re- 
sult. But,  this  being  allowed,  in  what 
sense  and  how  far  was  Shelley  prophetic 
of  the  time  to  come,  and  an  element  in  its 
coming? 

The  spirit  of  discontent  has  been  a  pre- 
siding  genius  in  literature  since  the 
reflective  life  of  man  began.  The  imagina- 
tive creation  of  ideal  commonwealths 
marks  its  conquest  of  political  thought, - 
and  the  dream  of  the  golden  age  its  victory 
in  poetry.  So  long  is  it  since  the  inspira- 
tion that  governed  Shelley  has  been  active 
in  minds  like  his  own.  The  Republic  of 
Plato,  however,  and  that  eclogue  of  the 
young  Vergil  which  won  for  him  a  place 
among  the  prophets  of  Christ,  though  they 
are  the  highest  reach  of  literature  in  such 
expression,   are  negative;   they  condemn 


412  SHELLEY'S   WORK. 

what  is,  by  a  poetic  escape  into  a  world 
that  should  be.  With  the  rise  of  democ- 
racy the  positive  expression  of  discontent, 
in  those  parts  of  literature  which  reflect 
the  life  of  society  as  distinguished  from 
individual  life,  has  become  more  direct, 
comprehensive,  and  telling.  In  the  last 
century,  in  particular,  the  world  was  com- 
ing to  a  consciousness  of  its  own  misery. 
The  state  of  man  was  never  more  bitterly 
set  forth  than  by  Swift,  nor  more  drearily 
than  by  Johnson.  Comfortable  and  self- 
satisfied  as  that  century  is  often  described, 
it  was  the  dark  soil  in  which  the  seeds  of 
time  were  germinating.  It  ended  in  dry 
skepticism,  cold  rationalism,  and  finally 
in  that  utilitarian  preoccupation  of  the 
mind  which  was  a  European  mood. 

The  first  effort  toward  better  things,  as 
is  apt  to  be  the  case,  was  political.  The 
Revolution  broke.  The  hopefulness  of 
that  time,  when  in  the  year  of  Shelley's 
birth  Wordsworth  said,  "  'Twas  bliss  to  be 
alive,  but  to  be  young  was  very  heaven," 
is  perhaps  that  one  of  its  phases  which  is 
now  realized  with  most  difficulty.  It 
reminds  one  of  the  faitli  of  the  early 
Church  in  the  immediate  coming  of  the 


SHELLEY'S   WORK.  413 

reign  of  Christ  on  earth.  When  Shelley 
began  to  think  and  feel,  and  became  a 
living  soul,  the  first  flush  of  dawn  had 
gone  by ;  but  the  same  hopefulness  sprang 
up  in  him,  it  was  invincible,  and  it  made 
him  the  poet  of  the  J!le volution,  of  which 
he  was  the  child.  So  far  as  tlie  Revolu- 
tion was  speculative  or  moral,  he  reflected 
it  completely.  Its  commonplaces  were 
burning  truths  in  his  heart;  its  ferment 
was  his  own  intellectual  life;  its  confu- 
sions, its  simplicities,  its  misapprehen- 
sions of  the  laws  of  social  change,  were  a 
part  of  himself.  It  would  be  wrong  to 
ascribe  the  crudities  of  Shelley's  thought 
merely  to  his  immature  and  boyish  devel- 
opment :  they  belonged  quite  as  much  to 
the  youth  of  the  cause ;  he  received  what 
he  was  taught  in  the  form  in  which  his 
masters  held  it.  The  ease  with  which 
genius  thrives  upon  any  food,  and  turns 
all  to  use,  might  be  astonishing  were  it 
not  so  commonly  to  be  observed ;  but  its 
transformations  are  sometimes  bewilder- 
ing. Like  fire  from  heaven  Shelley's 
genius  fell  upon  the  dry  bones  of  rational- 
ism, and  they  rose  up,  a  spirit  of  beauty 
and  of  power.      It  was  the  same  change 


414  SHELLEY'S    WORK. 

that  took  place  when  philosophy  went  out 
into  the  streets  of  Paris,  and  in  the  twink- 
ling of  an  eye  was  made  a  flaming  msenad. 
It  was  the  wand  of  the  Revolution  touch- 
ing the  soul  of  man.  Shelley  was,  in 
truth,  in  the  whirl  of  forces  which  he  only 
half  understood,  vaster  than  he  knew, 
with  destinies  dimly  adumbrated  in  his 
own  spirit,  like  the  poet  of  his  own  elo- 
quent description.  The  Revolution  was, 
in  Gray's  phrase,  "the  Mighty  Mother"  of 
this  child;  she  showed  him  the  world-old 
vision  of  the  Saturnian  reign  that  has  ever 
hung  over  Italy,  yet  more  fair  than  the 
fairest  of  all  our  lands ;  she  set  him  in  the 
footprints  of  Plato ;  and  she  filled  his  heart 
with  many  hatreds. 

The  principles  and  remedies  which  Shel- 
ley adopted  were  of  the  utmost  simplicity. 
Principles  and  remedies  must  be  simple 
in  order  to  be  capable  of  wide  application 
in  the  reform  of  society.  He  was  not  an 
original  thinker.  He  had  the  enormous 
receptive  and  assimilative  power  which 
characterizes  high  genius,  and  he  made  it 
his  function  to  give  lofty  and  winning  ex- 
pression to  the  ideas  that  he  felt  to  be  of 
ennobling  and  beneficent  power  over  men. 


SHELLEY'S    WORK.  415 

He  had  also  a  strongly  practical  tempera- 
ment; and  he  wished  to  apply  ideas  as 
well  as  to  express  them,  and  in  his  own 
life  he  was  always  restlessly  doing  what 
he  thought,  linking  the  word  with  an  act, 
carrying  conviction  to  the  extreme  issue 
of  duty  performed.  It  was  this  union  of 
the  practical  and  speculative  instincts, 
each  highly  developed,  which,  under  the 
breath  of  his  poetic  nature,  made  his  sym- 
pathies with  reform  so  intense  that  he 
might  well  describe  them  as  a  passion. 
Yet  his  political,  social,  and  religious 
beliefs  were  nothing  unusual.  They  have 
been  called  superficial ;  but  they  were  so, 
in  the  main,  in  no  other  sense  than  are 
the  principles  of  democracy,  philanthropy, 
and  intellectual  liberty.  They  were  the 
simple  truths  whose  acceptance  by  the 
world  goes  on  so  slowly.  He  adopted 
the  right  of  private  judgment,  and  with 
it  the  right  of  the  individual  to  put  his 
beliefs  in  action ;  the  first  discredited  for 
him  the  excellence  of  the  existing  order, 
and  brought  him  quickly  into  conflict  with 
prevailing  opinion;  the  second,  in  its 
turn,  occasioned  a  more  serious  collision 
with  that  existing  order  itself,  which  met 


416  SHELLEY'S    WORK. 

him  in  the  form  of  custom,  intolerance, 
and  force.  These  three  things  he  hated, 
because  he  hated  most  of  all  injustice,  of 
which  they  were  the  triple  heads.  In  all 
this  he  had  the  ordinary  fortune  of  the 
revolutionist.  He  was  face  to  face  with 
the  enemy.  The  power  of  custom  in 
society,  which  Wordsworth  had  described, 
"  heavy  as  frost  and  deep  almost  as  life  " ; 
the  venom  of  intolerance,  the  foe  against 
which  Locke  had  armed  him ;  the  suprem- 
acy of  force,  if  it  be  invoked,  in  which  the 
long  history  of  tyranny  had  instructed  him 
—  these  stood  in  his  way,  and  only  his  own 
indignant  verse  can  express  the  violence 
of  the  hatred  and  contempt  they  excited 
in  his  breast. 

What  were  the  tenets  that  had  so  in- 
volved him  in  opposition  to  the  social 
opinion  of  his  own  country  that  he  went 
into  voluntary  exile?  His  atheisjn  stands 
first  because  it  caused  his  expulsion  horp. 
Oxford.  What  was  this  atheism  in  sub- 
stance? He  had  conceived  the  divine 
power  in  terms  of  the  historic  Jehovah, 
and  its  relation  to  man  under  the  Chris- 
tian dispensation  in  terms  of  the  legal 
definitions  of  an  obsolescent  theology;  nor 


SHELLEY'S   WORK.  417 

can  it  be  gainsaid  that  these  notions  coin- 
cided with  the  ideas  then  prevalent,  but 
not  realized  with  the  same  distinctness  in 
the  moral  consciousness  of  those  who  held 
them  as  in  Shelley's.  When  he  began  to 
think,  this  conception  was  antagonized  in 
two  ways.  In  the  first  instance  he  ac- 
quired some  rudimentary  metaphysics,  and 
it  became  necessary  to  reconcile  an  anthro- 
pomorphic conception  of  deity  with  a  philo- 
sophical definition.  In  the  second  instance 
he  developed  an  ideal  of  goodness,  and  it 
became  necessary  to  reconcile  the  divine 
virtue,  as  shown  in  the  same  historic  con- 
ception of  deity,  with  the  voice  of  his  own 
conscience.  He  took  the  short  and  easy, 
but  natural  method,  and  denied  the  truth 
of  the  original  conception.  The  meta- 
physical difficulty,  however  little  it  may 
vex  mature  minds,  was  a  real  one  to  him ; 
and  in  connection  with  it  Newman's  state- 
ment may  profitably  be  recalled,  that  no 
question  is  hedged  about  with  more  diffi- 
culties than  the  being  of  God.  The  moral 
difficulty,  also,  was  a  real  one;  and  Rob- 
ertson, whose  Christian  faith  and  sincerity 
none  can  doubt,  was  right  in  defending 
Shelley's  decision  and  saying,   "Change 


418  SHELLEY'S   WOBK. 

the  name,  and  I  will  bid  that  character 
defiance  with  you."  This  was  Shelley's 
atheism  —  on  the  one  hand,  a  philosophical 
definition,  and  on  the  other,  the  humaniz- 
ing of  a  pre-Christian  and  mediaeval  idea 
of  God  in  accordance  with  that  moral  en- 
lightenment which  Christianity  itself  has 
spread  through  the  world.  Shelley  ex- 
pressed his  denial  in  terms  of  blasphemy, 
as  the  words  were  then  understood;  but 
the  "almighty  fiend"  whom  he  denounced 
was  as  much  an  idol  as  Dagon  or  Moloch. 
What  has  the  issue  been?  The  concep- 
tion which  Shelley  attacked  with  such 
vehemence  no  longer  finds  a  voice  in  pub- 
lic discussion.  It  is  as  dumb  as  the  ideas 
which  once  suggested  such  picturesquely 
lurid  titles  to  the  sermons  under  which  our 
fathers  trembled  and  transgressed.  To- 
day the  philosophical  definition  would  be 
less  difficult  to  frame,  and  it  would  awake 
no  serious  hostility;  the  moral  ideal,  too, 
is  enthroned  in  religious  conceptions  as 
securely  as  in  the  conscience  of  man.  It 
would  be  idle  to  say  that  advance  has  not 
been  made,  or  to  deny  that  it  has  pursued 
the  lines  of  Shelley's  instincts,  his  intel- 
lectual questioning,  and  his  moral  sympa- 


SHELLEY'S    WOEK.  419 

thies.  Merely  as  a  polemical  writer  he 
stood  in  the  necessary  path  of  progress; 
but  as  a  poet,  he  vastly  strengthened  that 
moral  enthusiasm  which  after  his  death 
regenerated  religion  as  it  had  before  in- 
spired politics.  He  impressed  his  own 
moral  ideal  on  those  whom  he  influenced, 
and  the  old  conception  became  as  impossi- 
ble for  them  as  for  him.  Other  forces 
united  in  the  general  tendency,  for  all 
things  spiritual  drew  that  way;  nor  is  it 
possible  to  distinguish  his  share  in  the 
change  that  has  passed  over  English  the- 
ology in  this  country.  But  some  sentences 
of  the  Rev.  Stopford  Brooke  are  apposite, 
and  the  opinion  of  such  an  observer  may 
be  allowed  weight  upon  the  question  of 
Shelley's  place  in  this  field.  "He  indi- 
rectly made,"  says  this  writer,  "as  time 
went  on,  an  ever-increasing  number  of  men 
feel  that  the  will  of  God  could  not  be  in 
antagonism  to  the  universal  ideas  concern- 
ing man,  that  His  character  could  not  be 
in  contradiction  to  the  moralities  of  the 
heart,  and  that  the  destiny  He  willed  for 
mankind  must  be  as  universal  and  as  just 
and  loving  as  Himself.  There  are  more 
clergymen  and  more  religious  laymen  than 


420  SHELLEY'S   WOBK. 

we  imagine  who  trace  to  the  emotion  Shel- 
ley awakened  in  them  when  they  were 
young  their  wider  and  better  views  of 
God."  Whether  this  be  true  to  the  extent 
indicated  is  immaterial.  It  is  enough  if 
it  becomes  clear  that  Shelley's  "atheism" 
was,  by  its  revolt,  the  sign  and  promise  of 
that  liberalized  thought  and  more  humane 
feeling  in  respect  to  the  divine  dealing 
with  men  which  characterized  the  religious 
progress  of  the  time;  that  his  denial  has 
been  sustained  by  the  common  conscience 
of  mankind;  and  that  the  affirmations  of 
the  moral  ideal  which  he  made  have  been 
strengthened  by  years  as  they  passed  by, 
and  have  spread  and  been  accepted  as  noble 
expressions  of  the  conviction  and  aspira- 
tion of  the  men  who  came  after  him. 
Whether  Shelley  intended  these  results 
in  the  precise  form  that  they  took  is  also 
immaterial.  It  probably  never  entered 
his  mind  that  clergymen  would  thank  him 
for  a  liberalized  orthodoxy,  any  more  than 
that  Owenites  would  use  Queen  Mab  as  an 
instrument  in  their  propaganda,  and  thus 
give  the  widest  circulation  to  that  one  of 
his  poems  which  he  would  have  suppressed. 
Certainly  he  had  a  conscious  purpose  to 


SHELLEY'S   WOSK.  421 

destroy  old  religious  conceptions  and  to 
quicken  the  hearts  of  men  with  new  ideals, 
not  religious,  but  moral.  If  botli  results 
came  about,  under  the  favor  of  time,  and 
were  such  as  the  poet  meant  them  to  be, 
as  in  some  measure  was  the  case,  and  yet 
the  influence  also  operated  in  an  unex- 
pected way  by  the  reaction  of  the  awakened 
conscience  on  the  narrower  faith  to  its  lib- 
eralization instead  of  its  destruction,  this 
does  not  affect  the  reality  of  Shelley's 
work ;  it  affords  rather  an  example  of  that 
element  in  the  poet  through  which,  as 
Shelley  said,  he  is  an  instrument  as  well  as 
a  power,  and  in  neither  capacity  is  wholly 
conscious  of  his  significance. 

The  second  tenet  which  immediately 
drew  upon  him  scandal  and  obloquy  was 
his  belief  that  legal  marriage  was  not  a 
proper  social  institution.  He  had  derived 
the  opinion  from  his  teachers,  and  held  it 
in  common  with  other  reformers  of  the  age. 
It  is  a  view  that  from  time  to  time  arises 
in  minds  of  an  entirely  pure  and  virtuous 
disposition  under  the  stress  of  a  rigorous 
and  undiscriminating  law.  The  state  of 
women  under  English  law  was  then  one 
of  practical  servitude,  and  in  the  case  of 


422  Shelley's  work. 

unfit  marriages  might  become,  and  some- 
times was,  deplorable.  The  continuance 
of  forced  union,  on  the  side  of  either  man 
or  woman,  after  affection  or  respect  ceased, 
was  revolting  to  Shelley,  the  more  so  in 
proportion  to  the  refinement  and  purity  of 
his  own  poetic  idealization  of  the  relation 
of  love.  The  helpless  condition  of  woman 
under  such  circumstances  appealed  to  him 
as  a  violation  of  justice  and  of  liberty  as 
well  as  a  degradation  of  love.  If  since  his 
time  the  rights  of  married  women  have 
been  recognized  by  important  and  really 
sweeping  changes  in  their  legal  status,  and 
if  the  bonds  of  the  legal  tie  have  been  re- 
laxed, in  both  instances  it  was  an  acknowl- 
edgment of  the  reality  of  the  social  wrongs 
which  were  the  basis  of  his  conviction.  If 
there  is  less  tendency  among  reformers  to 
attack  the  institution  of  marriage,  and  the 
subject  has  ceased  to  be  conspicuous, 
though  still  occasionally  manifest,  it  is 
because  the  removal  of  the  more  oppressive 
and  tyrannic  elements  in  the  difficulty  has 
relieved  the  situation.  The  belief  of 
Shelley  in  love  without  marriage  was  an 
extreme  way  of  stating  his  disbelief  in 
marriage  without  love,  as  the  law  of  Eng- 


SHELLEY'S   WORK.  423 

land  then  was.  There  was,  too,  a  positive 
as  well  as  a  negative  side  to  his  convic- 
tion, but  in  this  he  merely  repeated  the 
dream  of  the  golden  age,  and  asserted  that 
in  the  ideal  commonwealth  love  and  mar- 
riage would  be  one ;  and  this  has  been  the 
common  theme  of  Utopians,  whether  poets 
or  thinkers,  in  all  ages.  In  other  words, 
it  may  reasonably  be  held  that,  in  this 
case  as  in  that  of  his  atheism,  an  extreme 
view  was  taken;  but  in  relation  to  the 
time  and  to  the  reforms  made  since  then, 
his  ideas  of  marriage  held  in  them  the  sub- 
stantial injustice  of  a  state  of  facts  then 
existing  and  the  lines  of  tendency  along 
which  advance  was  subsequently  made. 
He  reflected  the  age,  and  he  foreshadowed 
the  future;  though  the  results,  just  as  in 
the  case  of  religion,  consist  in  a  modifica- 
tion, and  not  in  demolition,  of  the  ideas 
which  he  antagonized. 

Shelley's  atheism,  however,  and  his 
views  of  legal  marriage,  have  had  a  dispro- 
portionate attention  directed  to  them  be- 
cause of  their  close  relation  to  the  events 
of  his  own  life.  These  were  not  the  things 
in  his  philosophy  for  which  he  most  cared. 
In  the  matter  of  marriage,  though  he  acted 


424  SHELLEY'S   WORK. 

on  his  belief  in  taking  his  second  wife 
without  a  divorce  from  his  first,  in  both 
unions  he  went  through  the  form  of  mar- 
riage.    He  would  never  have  so  compro- 
mised with  the  world  in  an  opinion  which 
was  a  point  of  conscience  with  him.     If  it 
had  been  a  question  of  the  freedom  of  the 
press,  or  of  the  welfare  of  the  masses,  he 
would  have  stood  by  his  conviction  though 
they  sent  him  to  prison  or  the  scaffold. 
The  affairs  which  he  took  an  active  inter- 
est in,  and  endeavored  to  make  practical, 
were  political.     At  first  the  freedom  of 
the  press  was  nearest  to  him,  and  he  helped 
with  sympathy  or  money  those  whom  he 
knew  to  be  singled  out  for  persecution  by 
the  Government ;  then  the  state  of  Ireland, 
Catholic  emancipation,  the  putting  of  re- 
form to  the  vote,  the  condition  of  the  poor, 
exercised  his  mind  and  called  out  such 
labors  as  were  open  to  him ;  at  a  still  later 
time  the  Manchester  riots,  the  revolutions 
on  the  Continent,  and  such  larger  matters 
engaged  his  enthusiasm.    He  was  the  most 
contemporary  of  all  poets.     His  keen  in- 
terest in  what  was  going  on  was  charac- 
teristic; he  lost  no  occasion  which  gave 
him  opportunity  to  use  tlie  question  of  the 


SBELLEY'S    WORK.  425 

moment  to  spread  his  general  principles. 
His  immediate  response  to  the  hour  is 
noticeable  from  the  time,  for  example,  of 
the  death  of  the  Princess  Charlotte,  on 
which  he  wrote  a  pamphlet,  to  that  of  the 
Greek  rising,  on  which  he  composed  a 
lyric  drama.  What  poet  before  ever  had 
occasion,  as  he  did  in  the  preface  to  Hel- 
las, to  beg  "  the  forgiveness  of  my  readers 
for  the  display  of  newspaper  erudition  to 
which  I  have  been  reduced  "  ?  The  words 
are  most  significant  of  the  spirit  of  his  life. 
It  is  also  not  useless  to  observe  that  a  share 
of  Shelley's  violence,  especially  in  early 
years,  is  due  to  the  fact  that  he  was  actu- 
ally in  the  arena  and  taking  blows  in  his 
own  person.  Such  a  man  does  not,  be- 
tween the  ages  of  seventeen  and  twenty- 
four,  write  with  the  same  equable  restraint 
as  a  student  in  his  library;  he  is  not 
likely  to  hold  opinions  in  temperate  forms ; 
and  if,  like  Shelley,  he  is  by  nature  sen- 
sitive to  injury  and  resentful  of  it,  his 
language  takes  heat  and  may  become  ex- 
travagant. What  he  struggled  with  was 
not  only  thought,  but  fact.  It  was  to  his 
advantage,  doubtless,  that  he  removed  to 
Italy,  where,  being  less  irritated,  he  was 


426  SHELLEY'S   WORK. 

able  to  express  his  abstract  ideas  in  the 
quiet  and  undisturbed  atmosphere  of  im- 
aginative poetry. 

These  abstract  ideas,  his  scheme  of  so- 
ciety, were  acquired  in  his  youth,  and 
they  were,  as  has  been  said,  of  the  utmost 
simplicity.  He  adopted  the  doctrine 
known  as  that  of  the  perfectibility  of  man. 
It  is  especially  associated  with  the  name 
of  Condorcet.  Shelley  believed  that  so- 
ciety could  be  made  over  in  such  a  way 
that  virtue  would  prevail  and  happiness 
be  secured.  He  thought  that  institutions 
should  be  abolished  and  a  new  rule  of  life 
substituted.  He  did  not  enter  upon  de- 
tails. The  present  was  wrong;  let  it 
cease:  that  was  the  whole  of  the  matter. 
It  was  a  form  of  what  is  now  called  nihil- 
ism. The  state  of  society  that  existed 
seemed  to  him  real  anarchy.  "Anarchs" 
was  a  favorite  word  with  him  for  kings 
and  all  persons  in  power.  His  hatred 
was  consequently  centred  on  the  estab- 
lished order.  It  was  a  government  of 
force,  and  therefore  he  hated  force;  kings 
and  priests  were  its  depositaries,  he  hated 
them ;  war  was  its  method,  he  hated  war. 
The  word  is  not  too  strong.     Gall  flows 


SHELLEY'S   WORK.  427 

from  his  pen  when  he  mentions  any  of 
these  things.  Their  very  names  are  to 
him  embodied  curses.  If  the  system  he 
saw  prevailing  in  Europe  bred  in  him  such 
hatred,  its  results  in  practice  filled  him 
with  pity.  He  was  susceptible  to  the 
sight  of  suffering  and  misery,  and  almost 
from  boyhood  the  effort  to  relieve  wretched- 
ness by  personal  action  characterized  him. 
He  could  endure  the  sight  of  pain  as  little 
as  the  sight  of  wrong.  The  lot  of  the 
poor,  wherever  he  came  upon  it  in  experi- 
ence or  in  description,  stirred  his  com- 
miseration to  the  depth  of  his  heart.  He 
was  one  of  those  born  to  bear  the  suffer- 
ings of  the  world,  in  a  real  and  not  a  sen- 
timental or  metaphorical  sense.  He  had 
seen  the  marks  of  the  devastation  of  war 
in  France ;  he  knew  the  state  of  the  people 
under  tyrannical  rule;  he  was  as  well 
aware  of  the  degradation  of  the  English 
masses  as  of  the  stagnation  of  Ital3\ 
Wherever  he  looked,  the  fruits  of  govern- 
ment were  poverty,  ignorance,  hopeless- 
ness, in  vast  bodies  of  mankind.  There 
was  nothing  for  it  but  the  Revolution,  and 
heart  and  soul  he  was  pledged  to  that 
cause. 


428  SHELLEY'S   WOBK. 

But  his  hopes  went  far  beyond  the  pur- 
poses of  a  change  to  be  brought  about  by 
force  for  limited  political  ends;  such  an 
event  involved  the  destruction  of  forms 
of  power  which  he  wished  to  see  destroyed, 
and  might  result  in  amelioration,  since 
force  become  popular  was  better  than  force 
that  remained  aristocratic;  but  his  heart 
was  set  upon  a  change  of  a  far  different 
nature,  more  penetrating,  more  universal, 
more  permanent  —  nothing  less  than  that 
"divine  result  to  which  the  whole  creation 
moves."  Since  Shelley,  in  common  with 
the  thinkers  of  his  time,  believed  that  the 
world's  wretchedness  was  due  to  political 
misrule,  and  could  be  obviated  by  a  change 
of  institutions,  he  was  on  his  practical  side 
in  alliance  with  every  expression  of  revo- 
lutionary force ;  but  he  had  an  ideal  side, 
and  in  his  poetry  it  was  this  that  found 
expression.  He  sang  the  golden  age ;  time 
and  again  he  returned  to  the  theme,  of 
which  he  could  not  weary,  from  the  hdnv 
of  youth  when  he  poured  forth  the  story 
of  man's  perfect  state  in  eloquence  still 
burning  with  first  enthusiasm,  to  the  im- 
passioned moment  when  he  created  the 
titanic  forms  of  his  highest  lyrical  drama, 


SHELLEY'S   WOEK.  429 

and  bade  the  planetary  spirits  discourse  in 
spheral  music  the  paean  of  peace  on  earth, 
good  will  to  men.  The  paradise  of  The 
Revolt  of  Islam,  the  isle  of  seclusion  in 
Epipsychidion,  the  echoes  of  the  Vergilian 
song  in  Hellas,  like  Queen  Mab  and  Pro- 
metheus Unbound,  show  the  permanence 
before  his  rapt  eyes  of  that  vision  of 
heaven  descended  upon  earth  which  has 
fascinated  the  poets  of  all  times.  Yet 
how  transform  this  "  world's  woe "  into 
that  harmony?  Shelley's  command  was 
as  simple,  as  direct,  as  Christ's  —  "  Love 
thy  neighbor."  No;  there  was  nothing 
novel  in  it,  nothing  profound  or  original. 
It  is  so  long  now  since  man's  knowledge 
of  what  is  right  has  outrun  his  will  to 
embody  it  in  individual  life  and  the  insti- 
tutions of  society,  that  new  gospels,  were 
they  possible,  are  quite  superfluous. 
What  Shelley  had  that  other  men  seldom 
have  was  faith  in  this  doctrine,  the  will 
to  practice  it,  the  passion  to  spread  it. 
There  may  be  to  our  eyes  something  pa- 
thetic in  such  simplicity,  as  the  belief  of 
boyhood  in  goodness  is  pathetic  in  the 
sight  of  the  man ;  something  innocent,  as 
we  say,  in  such  unworldliness,  and  again 


430  SHELLEY'S   WORK. 

we  intimate  the  eternal  child  in  the  poet's 
heart;  but  it  is  the  simj3licity  and  inno- 
cence—  the  pathos  it  may  be  —  of  what 
Christ  taught.  That  Shelley  believed 
what  he  said  cannot  be  doubted.  He 
thought  that  men  might,  if  they  would, 
love  their  fellow-men,  and  then  injustice 
would  of  itself  cease,  being  dried  at  its 
source,  and  that  reign  of  mutual  helpful- 
ness, of  the  common  sharing  of  the  abun- 
dance of  the  earth's  harvest,  of  man's 
enfranchisement  from  slavery  to  another's 
luxurious  wants,  would  begin;  war,  pov- 
erty, and  tyranny,  force  and  fraud,  greed, 
indulgence,  and  crime  would  be  abolished. 
It  was  too  obvious  to  need  consideration; 
man  was  capable  of  perfection,  and  the 
method  to  attain  to  it  was  love,  and  this 
way  once  adopted,  as  it  could  be,  by  the 
fiat  of  each  individual  will,  would  enthrone 
justice  and  spread  virtue  throughout  the 
world.  It  was  not  reason  that  withstood 
this  doctrine,  but  custom,  tradition,  inter- 
ested individuals  and  classes,  the  active 
and  law-intrenched  power  of  institutions 
established  for  the  security  and  profit  of 
the  few  —  a  whole  order  of  society  resting 
upon  a  principle  opposite  to  love,  the  prin- 


SHELLEY'S   WORK.  431 

ciple  of  organized  force.  If  this  time- 
incrustecl  evil,  this  blind  and  deaf  and 
dumb  authority  of  wrong  long  prevalent, 
this  sorry  scheme  of  accepted  lies,  could 
be  destroyed  at  a  stroke,  a  simple  resolve 
in  each  breast  would  bring  heaven  on 
earth. 

This  was  Shelley's  creed.  It  may  be 
false,  impracticable,  and  chimerical;  it 
may  be  a  doctrinaire's  philosophy,  an  en- 
thusiast's programme,  a  poet's  dream:  but 
that  it  has  points  of  contact  and  coinci- 
dence with  gospel  truth  is  plain  to  see; 
and  in  fact  Shelley's  whole  effort  may  be 
truly  described  as  an  incident  in  that  slow 
spread  of  Christian  ideas  whose  assimila- 
tion by  mankind  is  so  partial,  uneven, 
imperfect,  so  hesitating,  so  full  of  com- 
promise, so  hopeless  in  delay.  He  had 
disenwagred  once  more  from  the  ritual  of 
Pharisees  and  the  things  of  Caesar  the 
original  primitive  commands,  and  made 
them  as  simple  as  conscience;  he  may  have 
been  wrong  in  the  sense  that  these  things 
are  impossible  to  man  in  society;  but  if  he 
was  in  error,  he  erred  with  a  greater  than 
Plato. 

But   it   is   not  necessary  to   carry  the 


432  SHELLEY'S   WORK. 

matter  so  far.  Shelley  was  a  moralist,  but 
he  used  the  poet's  methods.  He  declared 
the  great  commands,  and  he  denounced 
wrong  with  anathemas ;  but  he  also  gave 
a  voice  to  the  lament  of  the  soul,  to  its 
aspirations  and  its  ineradicable,  if  mis- 
taken, faith  in  the  results  of  time;  and 
the  ideas  which  he  uttered  with  such  afflu- 
ence of  expression,  such  poignancy  of  sym- 
pathy, such  a  thrill  of  prophetic  triumph, 
are  absorbed  in  the  spirit  which  poured 
them  forth  —  in  its  indignation  at  injus- 
tice, its  hopefulness  of  progress,  its  com- 
plete conviction  of  the  righteousness  of  its 
cause.  He  has  this  kindling  power  in 
men's  hearts.  They  may  not  believe  in 
the  perfectibility  of  man  under  the  con- 
ditions of  mortal  life,  but  they  do  believe 
in  his  greater  perfection;  and  Shelley's 
words  strengthen  them  in  effort.  No 
cause  that  he  had  greatly  at  heart  has 
retreated  since  his  day.  There  are  thou- 
sands now,  where  there  were  hundreds 
then,  who  hold  his  beliefs.  The  Revolu- 
tion has  gone  on,  and  is  still  in  progress, 
though  it  has  yet  far  to  go.  What  part  he 
has  had  in  the  increase  of  the  mastering 
ideas  of  the   century   is   indeterminable. 


SHELLEY'S    WORK.  433 

He  was  dead  when  his  apostolic  work 
began.  His  earliest  and  unripe  poem, 
Queen  Mab,  was  the  first  to  be  caught  up 
by  the  spirit  of  the  times,  and  was  scat- 
tered broadcast;  and  wherever  it  fell  it 
served,  beyond  doubt,  to  unsettle  the  minds 
that  felt  it.  Crude  as  it  was,  it  was  ve- 
hement and  eloquent;  and  the  crudities 
which  have  most  offense  in  them  are  of 
the  sort  that  make  the  entrance  of  such 
ideas  into  uneducated  minds  more  easy. 
It  was  nearer  intellectually  to  these  minds 
than  a  better  poem  would  have  been. 
Rude  thoughts  not  too  carefully  discrimi- 
nated are  more  powerful  revolutionary  in- 
struments than  more  exact  truths  in  finer 
phrases.  Queen  Mab  was  certainly  the 
poem  by  which  he  was  long  best  known. 
The  first  revival  of  his  works  came  just 
before  the  time  of  the  Reform  Bill,  and 
they  were  an  element  in  the  agitation  of 
men's  minds ;  but  his  permanent  influence 
began  with  the  second  revival,  ten  years 
later,  when  his  collected  works  were  issued 
by  his  widow.  Since  then  edition  has 
followed  edition,  and  with  every  fall  of  his 
poems  from  the  presses  of  England  and 
America  new  readers  feel  the  impulse  of 


434  SHELLEY'S    WORK. 

his  passion,  blending  naturally  with  the 
moral  and  political  inspiration  of  an  age 
which  has  exhausted  its  spiritual  force  in 
pursuit  of  the  objects  that  he  bade  men 
seek.  Democracy,  of  which  philanthropy 
is  the  shadow,  has  made  enormous  gains; 
the  cause  is  older  and  social  analysis  has 
gone  farther  than  in  his  day ;  his  denuncia- 
tion of  kings  and  priests  seems  antiquated 
only  because  the  attack  is  now  directed  on 
the  general  conditions  of  society  Avhich 
make  tyrannical  power  and  legalized  privi- 
lege possible  under  any  political  organiza- 
tion, and  in  industrial  and  commercial  as 
well  as  military  civilizations ;  his  objects 
of  detestation  seem  vague  and  unreal  only 
because  a  hundred  definite  propositions, 
developed  by  socialistic  thought,  —  any 
one  of  which  was  more  rife  with  danger 
than  his  own  elementary  principles,  — 
have  been  put  forth  without  any  such  pen- 
alty being  visited  upon  their  authors  as 
was  fixed  upon  him.  This  advance,  ctnd 
more,  has  been  made.  The  consciousness 
of  the  masses,  both  in  respect  to  their  mate- 
rial position  and  their  power  to  remedy  it, 
has  increased  indefinitely  in  extent  and  in 
intensity  in  all  countries  affected  by  Euro- 


SHELLEY'S    WORK,  435 

pean  thought;  socialism,  anarchism,  nihil- 
ism are  names  upon  every  lip,  and  they 
measure  the  active  discontent  of  those 
strata  of  society  last  to  be  reached  by 
thought  except  the  bourgeoisie.  Whatever 
revolutionary  excess  may  unite  with  the 
movement,  the  stream  flows  in  the  direct 
course  of  Shelley's  thought  with  an  un- 
dreamt vehemence  and  mass.  That  he 
still  implants  in  others  that  passion  of 
his  for  reforming  the  world  is  not  ques- 
tioned; his  works  have  been  a  perennial 
fountain  of  the  democratic  spirit  with  its 
philanthropic  ardor.  As  in  the  other 
phases  of  his  influence,  so  in  this  its  grand 
phase,  his  work  has  been  in  modification 
instead  of  demolition  of  the  social  order; 
it  has  been  only  one  individual  element 
in  a  world-movement  issuing  from  many 
causes  and  sustained  from  many  sources ; 
but  here  too  he  fulfills  his  own  characteri- 
zation of  the  poet,  imperfectly  conscious 
of  his  own  meanings,  dimly  prophetic  of 
what  shall  be,  belonging  to  the  future 
whose  ideas  come  into  being  through  his 
intuitions,  sympathies,  and  longings. 

Shelley's  genius,  then,  it  must  be  ac- 
knowledged, had  this  prescience  by  which 


436  SHELLEY'S   WORK. 

it  seized  the  elements  of  the  future  yet 
inchoate,  and  glorified  them,  and  won  the 
hearts  of  men  to  worship  them  as  an 
imagined  hope,  and  fervently  to  desire 
their  coming.  If  one  thing  were  to  be 
sought  for  as  the  secret  of  his  power  on 
man,  I  should  say  it  was  his  belief  in  the 
soul.  No  poet  ever  put  such  unreserved 
trust  in  the  human  spirit.  He  laid  upon 
it  the  most  noble  of  all  ideal  tasks,  and 
inspired  it  with  faith  in  its  own  passion. 
"Save  thyself,"  he  said,  and  showed  at  the 
same  time  the  death  in  which  it  lay,  the 
life  of  beauty,  love,  and  justice  to  which  it 
was  born  as  to  a  destiny.  Virtue  in  her 
shape  how  lovely,  humanity  throughout 
the  world  how  miserable,  were  the  two 
visions  on  which  he  bade  men  look;  and 
he  refused  to  accept  this  antithesis  of  what 
is  and  what  ought  to  be  as  inevitable  in 
man's  nature  or  divine  providence;  it  re- 
mained with  man,  he  said,  to  heal  him- 
self. He  was  helped,  perhaps,  in  his  faith 
in  the  human  spirit  by  the  early  denial  he 
made  of  religion  as  interpreted  by  the  the- 
ology of  his  period;  for  him  salvation 
rested  Avith  man,  or  nowhere.  In  later 
years  he  made  love  the  principle,  not  only 


suelley's  wore.  437 

of  human  society,  but  of  the  government  of 
the  universe;  it  was  his  only  conception 
of  divine  power;  but  he  never  reconciled 
in  thought  this  mystical  belief  with  the 
apparent  absence   of   this  divine  element 
from  its  lost  provinces  in  human  life.     He 
promised  men  in  their  effort  no  other  aid 
than  the  mere  existence,  in  the  universe, 
of  beneficent  laws  of  which  mankind  could 
avail  itself  by  submitting  thereto.     The 
doctrine  of  the  power  of  the  human  spirit 
to  perfect  itself,  and  the  necessity  of  the 
exercise  of  this  power  as  the  sole  means  of 
progress,  remained  in  unaffected  integrity. 
This  fundamental  conviction  is  one  that 
has   spread  equally  with  the  democratic 
idea  or  the  philanthropic  impulse.      The 
immediacy  of  the  soul  as  the  medium  of 
even  revealed  truth  is  a  conception  that 
clarifies  with  each  decade,   and  it  is  in 
harmony   with    Shelley's    most    intimate 
convictions,    with    those    tendencies   and 
dispositions  of  his  temperament  so  natural 
to  him  that  they  were  felt  rather  than 
thought.     But  in  such  analysis  one  may 
refine   too   much.     It    is   meant  only   to 
illustrate  how  completely,  in  the  recesses 
of  his  nature  as  well  as  in  definite  mani- 


438  SHELLEY'S   WOEK. 

festation  of  his  thought,  he  was  the  child, 
intellectually  and  morally,  of  the  conquer- 
ing influences  implicit  in  his  age,  so 
readily  apprehensive  of  them  that  he  an- 
ticipated their  power  in  the  world,  so 
intensely  sympathetic  that  he  embodied 
them  in  imagination  before  the  fullness  of 
time,  so  compelled  to  express  them  that 
he  was  their  prophet  and  leader  in  the 
next  ages. 

By  his  own  judgment,  therefore,  of  what 
great  poets  are,  he  must  be  placed  among 
them,  and  the  office  of  genius,  as  he  defined 
it,  must  be  declared  to  be  his.  The  mil- 
lennium has  not  come,  any  more  than  it 
came  in  the  first  century.  The  cause  Shel- 
ley served  is  still  in  its  struggle ;  but  those 
to  whom  social  justice  is  a  watchword,  and 
the  development  of  the  individual  every- 
where in  liberty,  intelligence,  and  virtue 
is  a  cherished  hope,  must  be  thankful  that 
Shelley  lived,  that  the  substance  of  his 
work  is  so  vital,  and  his  influence,  inspir- 
ing as  it  is  beyond  that  of  any  of  our  poets 
in  these  ways,  was,  and  is,  so  completely 
on  the  side  of  the  century's  advance.  His 
words  are  sung  by  marching  thousands  in 
the  streets  of  London.     No  poet  of  our 


SHELLEY'S    WORK.  439 

time  has  touched  the  cause  of  progress  in 
the  living  breath  and  heart-throb  of  men 
so  close  as  that.  Yet,  remote  as  the  poet's 
dream  always  seems,  it  is  rather  that  life- 
long singing  of  the  golden  age,  in  poem 
after  poem,  which  most  restores  and  in- 
flames those  who,  whether  tliey  be  rude  or 
refined,  are  the  choicer  spirits  of  mankind, 
and  bring,  with  revolutionary  violence  or 
ideal  imagination,  the  times  to  come. 
They  hate  the  things  he  hated ;  like  him 
they  love,  above  all  things,  justice;  they 
share  the  passion  of  his  faith  in  mankind. 
Thus,  were  his  own  life  as  dark  as  Shake- 
speare's, and  had  he  left  unwritten  those 
personal  lyrics  which  some  who  conceive 
the  poet's  art  less  nobly  would  exalt  above 
his  grander  poems,  he  would  stand  pre- 
eminent and  almost  solitary  for  his  service 
to  the  struggling  world,  for  what  he  did 
as  a  quickener  of  men's  hearts  by  his  pas- 
sion for  supreme  and  simple  truths.  If 
these  have  more  hold  in  society  now  than 
when  he  died,  and  if  his  influence  has  con- 
tributed its  share,  however  blended  with 
the  large  forces  of  civilization,  he  has  in 
this  sense  given  law  to  the  world  and 
equaled  the  height  of  the  loftiest  concep- 


440  SHELLEY'S    WORK. 

tion  of  the  poet's  significance  in  the  spir- 
itual life  of  man.  Such,  taken  in  large 
lines  and  in  its  true  relations,  seems  to 
me  the  work  for  which  men  should  praise 
Shelley  on  this  anniversary,  leaving  mere 
poetic  enjoyment,  however  delightful,  and 
personal  charm,  however  winning,  to  other 
occasions. 


HEART    OF   MAN 

By  GEORGE    EDWARD   WOODBERRY 

Author  of  "  Studies  in  Letters  and  Life,"  etc. 

izmo.    Cloth.     $1.50 

The  intention  of  the  author  was  to  illustrate  how  ''  poetry,  poli- 
tics, and  religion  are  the  flowers  of  the  same  human  spirit,  and  have 
their  feeding  spots  in  a  common  soil,  '  deep  in  the  general  heart  of 


Providence  Journal. 

"  Books  like  this  of  Mr.  Woodberry's  are  not  common.  It  is  not 
alone  that  he  has  a  polished  style,  a  rich  culture,  originality  of 
thought  and  diction;  it  is  a  certain  nobility  of  feeling  and  utterance 
which  distinguishes  '  Heart  of  Man  '  from  the  ruck  of  essays  on  lit- 
erature or  philosophical  subjects.  Those  who  are  familiar  with  Mr. 
Woodberry's  poetry  will  know  at  once  what  we  mean.  .  .  .  Those 
who  care  for  really  good  reading  will  not  pass  this  book  by." 


WILD   EDEN 

By  GEORGE    EDWARD   WOODBERRY 

i6ino.    Cloth.     $1.25 

Romantic  lyrical  verses  with  a  nature  background  connecting 
them  in  a  series  —  full  of  delicate  imagery,  polished  in  form  and 
point  to  the  degree  of  fascination,  lofty  of  purpose,  at  once  graceful 
and  strong.  

THE   NORTH    SHORE   WATCH 

AND  OTHER  POEMS 

By  GEORGE    EDWARD   WOODBERRY 

i6mo.    Boards.    $1.25 
The  Dial. 

"Mr.  George  E.  Woodberry  is  one  of  those  reserved  writers  who 
are  content  to  be  heard  only  at  rare  intervals,  and  whose  thought  is 
allowed  to  ripen  before  it  takes  the  garb  of  print.  When  he  does 
speak,  whether  in  verse  or  prose,  we  know  that  he  is  giving  us  of 
his  best,  and  that  best  has  a  quality  too  rarely  met  with  in  this  age 
of  hurried  and  voluble  speech." 


THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

66  FIFTH  AVENUE,   NEW  YORK 


NATIONAL   STUDIES   IN   AMERICAN   LETTERS 
GEORGE  E.  WOODBERRY,  Editor 


OLD   CAMBRIDGE 

By    THOMAS    WENTWORTH    HIGGINSON 
i2mo.    Cloth.    $1.25 
Chicago  Evening  Post. 

"  No  better  possible  choice  than  Col.  Higginson  could  have  been 
made  for  the  recording  and  perpetuation  of  the  literary  glories  of  the 
old  college  town.  To  the  accurate  knowledge  of  the  pleasant  Massa- 
chusetts city,  obtainable  only  by  a  long  lifetime  spent  within  its  bor- 
ders, Col  Higginson  adds  a  close  intimacy  with  the  chief  characters 
in  the  part  played  by  the  place  in  the  formation  of  American  letters. 
.  .  .  The  volume  is  only  too  short  for  such  matter  as  the  writer  has 
tried  to  put  into  it,  and  were  the  matter  of  another  sort,  the  charm 
of  manner  would  still  leave  too  little  of  the  contents." 


BROOK    FARM 

By    LINDSAY   SWIFT 
i2mo.    Cloth.    $1.25 
The  Boston  Courier. 

"  The  book  has  a  value  apart  from  its  delineation  of  Brook  Farm. 
...  It  ought  to  be  widely  and  carefully  read,  especially  where  .  .  . 
socialistic  notions  are  gaining  many  adherents,  for  it  will  aid  the 
young  enthusiast  to  define  what  may  be  and  what  cannot  be  for  a 
very  long  century  at  least." 


IN  PREPARATION 
THE  AMERICAN   HISTORICAL  NOVEL 

By  Paul  Leicester  Ford. 

THE   KNICKERBOCKERS 

By  The  Rev.  Henry  Van  Dyke,  D.D. 

SOUTHERN   HUMORISTS 

By  John  Kendrick  Bangs. 

THE    CLERGY     IN    AHERICAN    LIFE    AND 

LETTERS.     By  The  Rev.  Daniel  Dulaney  Addison. 

FLOWERS  OF  ESSEX 

By  the  Editor. 

THE  HOOSIER  WRITERS 

By  Meredith  Nicholson. 


THE   MACMILLAN    COMPANY 

66  FIFTH  AVENUE,   NEW  YORK 


THE  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 
This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below 


m 


.if""* 


A^A3 


NOV  12  ]958 

MAY  2  5  1960 


SEP  13  IS*" 

JUN  16  1947 

^IB4    1949 

FEB  6     1950 
MAY  ^  ^  ^^-'^^ 

JUN2  0195:^ 

SEP  2  6  1952 

APR  8     RECe 
JAN  2  6  1954 

AUG  1  a  195I& 


Form  L-0 
20m-]2, '39(3386) 


ilBCTS 

misL  JAN  2  8  (98jt 

JAN  '~  *?  '°6S 
REC'D  LD-URL 

n«i-    SEP  1  9  1368 

SEP  1 1 1968 


NOV  1 9  1974 


/ 


AA      000  293  468 5" 


STA1 


Out-of-Print  Books 


v;  1- 


^^V'^^"H^ 

■ 

1 

1 

■■,  .U_   .V^-^.";-iiil;V' 

'M 

.  ..■,:'.-V;-".;..-s':''-;^f  '  -*'if| 


-■/•   ;■■-    I.  (J 


■-  ^>. 


.  r_A  - 


if 

;^  'JP- 


:,  :>■:■■:  j^'.m 


1 


